


In The Stillness Between Two Waves (Au Sommet des Vagues)

by Earfalas



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Introspection, Its a lot, M/M, Magic, NaNoWriMo, Original Fiction, Pirates, Podfic Welcome, Worldbuilding, also it's very gay, also moments where i get lost describing the sea, many ramblings about love and what it is to be human, trust me i'll make those two things work together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22480222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Earfalas/pseuds/Earfalas
Summary: In The Stillness Between Two Waves was written as part of the 2019 NaNoWriMo, and it's an on-going project of mine to illustrate it into a comic/graphic novel. It's a tale about pirates, about love, about magic, revenge, hate and forgivness.Follow the adventures of the crew of the Devil's Smile sailing toward chaos and fury only to find that the real treasure was the friendhships they made along the way."Let’s start at the beginning. The sea, raging power, unadulterated force. Our beginning is the sea because for it might not be the main character, it supports all the events that we are about to describe. The sea has no part, has no voice. The sea is the stage that enables the actors to walk up and talk, to stumble, to act the part of their love and their hate until the lights go down and the applause die and all that’s left is the sea again."
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 7





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> So, my goal when i started NaNoWriMo was to get the ideas about my comic out of my head and onto paper , without really defining a plan or an order in which to do that. That's why this whole thing might seem very puzzle-like ; those are snapshots of how my world works, and defining moments in my characters' lives.  
> I hope you enjoy that strange way of telling my story, i'm so glad to be sharing it !

Let’s start at the beginning. The sea, raging power, unadulterated force.

Our beginning is the sea because for it might not be the main character, it supports all the events that we are about to describe.

The sea has no part, has no voice. The sea is the stage that enables the actors to walk up and talk, to stumble, to act the part of their love and their hate until the lights go down and the applause die and all that’s left is the sea again.

  
Uncaring one might say, but not unmoved. One can make the sea itself cry and wail, if one tries hard enough. One of our paper dolls, as frail as them may seem, did so. They made the sea cry and the winds weep, and all forces of the ocean felt as if their throats would never produce anything other than sobs when one weak paper doll of words and flesh did what they were told to do. The sea, raging power and sublime décor, is our setting for this story.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The Gods and their many deities. The Gods are the old ones.

The ones people think of most readily are the tall, huge dark gods that tread in the empty parts of the world. Mountains of muscle and deep magic walking amongst their unmoving rock siblings. But all gods aren’t those peaceful giants. Old gods fly, and swim, and walk in our busy cities. Their vassal’s deities are more well-known, since they link themselves to mortals. They are fleeting individuals but part of an immortal lineage, much like humans. The moment a vassal gives its oath to a family or a region, it is forever. They will surround the steps of those they follow, help them and whispers their secrets to them.

However, it has been a long time since any mortal as talked face to face with an Old One. They have no interest with humans, their surroundings or even other spirits. They walk, lost in their own heads, preoccupied with reflexions that begun long before words even existed. To stoop down and look at humans would prove an even more strange experience than that of a child kneeling next to an anthill. As much as the child is fascinated for a moment, there can only be three results: the boredom of the child, the destruction of the anthill, or deep existential dread on both parts.

Hence, Old Ones do not stoop. It takes an ant rising itself to the eye of the child for it to suddenly seem unique and interesting. One of our paper doll did just that. They climbed up to the eye of the giant, not to blind it but to flatter it and maybe , in a purely human fashion, to see what one sees at the top of the world.

  
We will try not to judge and simply state the actions this one paper doll took upon himself to accomplish, as unnatural and extreme they might be.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The sea, the gods, the men. Most of the men in our story are wild and free and feel the wind go from their noses down into their lungs and bite it on the way, out of pure spite. The men in our story feel the blood beat from their hearts to their heads and are ready to see that same blood spill out of similar hearts and similar heads. They are ready to roar, to bite to hiss and growl, they are the closest to humans they have ever been.

Their love is as ardent as their hatred, and upon every wave they sing the song of ultimate freedom.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The sea, the gods, the men, the lands. Islands upon islands, isolated, brutish and beautiful.

Continents of cancerous traditions and a deep sense of forlornness. Atolls of striking light and abundant food, fruits ripe in all seasons and fish jumping willingly into extended nets. Lands are as diverse as the sea is unique. For the men of the sea, land can be their redemption or their prison. For the child of the land, the sea can be the forbidden hope or the crippling fear. Lands of crumbling dirt fading into the sea. Land of strong granite fighting the ocean.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The lands, the sea, the sky.

Immense, all-seeing, spreading upon the sea like oil over a pond. Sky of many colours, sky of many omens, sign of times. Dotted by wings and sails, streaked by wooden hulls. The sky as a mirror of the struggle and fights of the men who tread underneath it, all the while crying crocodile tears upon their upturned heads.

The sky is a presence and a sign, home of spirits and painted canvas to be observed. The sky has no part, has no voice. The sky keeps being blue as the seas turns red, it keeps being grey when the hulls over turn and the dotting sails disappear. The sky, looming and stoic, keep its peace.

* * *

Why not start right in the middle?

When ships burn and overturn, when sails get torn and crumble to ashes.

When a man screams at the top of lungs and it is does not even come close to convey the pure hatred that scratch and bites in his guts and hold his heart in its fangs. He screams, he screams and he kills. His sword completes his arm and when he sinks it in the bodies in front of him, it is as if he was ripping their flesh with his bare hands. And if he was to be disarmed, he would do so. He kills and he yells as his feet tread upon the blood-soaked planks, and he is blind to the world.

Around him his own crew yell at him to get out, to stop his madness, but he doesn’t hear. He is blind and his eyes are fixed upon the figure of a man, lying of the floor, blood oozing his white flowing shirt and _if he is already dead I will burn the world down_ , _drag everyone with me, if he is dead and I didn’t kill him I will dry the sea down and cut all the throats and pierce all the hearts, please let him be alive so I can finally kill him._ The man lying in a pool of his own blood hurt him, took pain out of his body like no one had before. When he himself was covered in blood and despair, Ufizi had looked at him with an uncaring eye and took always more pain.

He could have stopped at pain, but he decided, without feeling or mercy to mark him. He took his face, he made it nothing but scars.

And by taking his face, he took his life.

_Let me kill him,_ Meher thinks, _he never gave me this mercy, let me sink my sword in his blood, he that took so much from me let me give him death._

* * *

Why not start right in the middle?

In the eyes of a boy who watches the sea every day and makes the ground under his feet echo with his sighs.

In his eyes you can see the hope of a life spend far away from this ground that holds him back.

He watches ships go by and all he can think is to jump aboard. He thinks that if his feet were to never touch the sand, the dirt, the earth ever again then he would be truly happy. He dreams of seeing everything from the top of a main mast, of seeing every dress the sky can wear and every colour it can paint on the sea’s face.

His skin is the same shade as the earthy ground that surrounds him and that’s the only thing his father left him. His mother tells him his father left for the sea, to join the ranks of those who fly a flag even darker than his skin. Diego wish he could resent him for it, wish he could hate him, or that he might love the earth he was born on more than the flimsy memories of his father.

That’s not the case, and he understand this man who left the dusty brown island for the cold clean arms of the sea all too well. He hates that when he walks up to the beach every day to watch the sea, he knows that he’s following his father footsteps. He hates to know that this trail goes to the water and disappears. He hates that he’s not brave enough to go all the way yet. He hates to know that this “yet” will be fulfilled.

* * *

Why not start right in the middle?

A man who walks in palaces of gold and marble, an unseen and insignificant part of a bigger mechanic. A man sent to the edges of the world on a mission, who carries his body and soul to foreign countries in order to serve. A man used to live in a constant deferent half-bow. One that keeps his head low and his golden hair carefully tied and tucked by a ribbon which tight knot sometimes borders on painful. A man of striking intelligence dulled by the habit of obedience to stupider superiors. That man used to walk in palaces of gold and marble, never able to touch. Never able to taste. Never able to shine.

That same man that falls, _hard,_ for the most gilded, the most bejewelled, the finest and shiniest man of all. And under the shine and dazzle of the gems and the silk, he sees the eyes that fall for him, _hard._ For the dulled edges and the faded gold of his hair.

Armand learns to breathe when he falls, breathless from the dance, at Meher’s side. The first breath that he takes from his lips is ragged, new and unbearably sweet from the cinnamon cakes that they keep sharing between them like carefree children. He breathes and breathes the air that rises from the sea into the prince’s bedchamber until he feels like he can’t breathe anymore and further sinks his lungs with the litany of his lover’s name.

* * *

Why not start right in the middle?

With the man who conquered every knowledge that was accessible to him, devouring with his young mind the extent of his forefathers’ wisdom and putting it back into the world in the form of his clever hands stitching wounds up and mixing medicine.

A young man dedicated to finding cure to sickness and giving comfort to pain. A man dedicated to sawing bones and opening chests, tracing the placement of bowels and tissues with charcoal upon paper, cutting deep into the mystery of organic life. A firm believer in the corporal and the understandable.

Pacing like a tiger in a cage, entrapped by the definite nature of his discoveries. Living in a known universe weighs on him like the shackles on a prisoner’s ankles and despite the good he does he wishes only to escape to somewhere where he would be out of his depth again.

He knows that this wish is not to be accomplished without consequences, and if he does travel to the other end of the world he will have to sacrifice the respect his fame earned him, and he shall be one among many, his slanted eyes and unusually tinted complexion making him a target to pointed fingers. His hands, experienced in tracing the complex calligraphy of his own language shall reveal themselves embarrassingly clumsy when scribbling the intricate letters of the many others tongues, he will have to learn. He shall have to prove himself worthy, again and again, and shall make mistakes, and shall be ridicule just as he was once, so long ago.

Just as if he was a babe again, he shall learn everything anew: to form words properly in order to be heard and understood, to eat in the way everyone else does, to dress himself and act a certain accepted way, and this shall be done as many time as the many borders he shall cross, the one written down on maps as well as the invisible ones. He shall learn to respect the unsaid, the ineffable, the things one cannot name and cannot explain. And confronted to the absolutely foreign, he will have to understand and accept it is the unbearably common for the eyes of those living on those sides. 

More than anything he shall refuse regret and fight frustration. Each step will have to be a choice and fatigue will drag his legs down, and cloud his brain. Over hill and under dale he will have to keep his mind fixated on his goal, and his goal is to find the unknown, just to be certain it still exists.

* * *

Why not start right in the middle? 

With a woman who would spat on any crown given to her, but who answer to the name of Queen.

With a woman who laughs at the idea of love, but caress the wooden curves of her ship with the most tender hand.

With a woman who defied the laws of men at every turn, crushing every assumption and common-sense sentences under her heel. Her body is marked with her refusal, that so-called divine symmetry of the human body, she thrown it under the swords of her enemies and rose stronger. She lost an arm fighting to steal it’s worth in gold and lost an eye to avenge the arm. When she boards a ship, the gait of leaning body and the resounding echo of her limp strikes more awe than that of an athlete leaping over the finish line. Her unique eye sets on the features of her victims and drills deep into their soul, while their eyes like crazed birds find no place to settle in her gaze.

Since she can’t hold still a scabbard to put her sword to sleep, she doesn’t wear one and the cold iron of her blade is constantly asking for blood, and often time its thirst is readily quenched. She follows no trail other than the flight of albatrosses and the stars that guide her hand on the wheel.

Her eye is fixed upon the slight void between the sky and the sea, that even the faeries fear to cross and if she was pressed to choose, that’s what she’d call home.


	2. Appearances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which you get to meet Giordano Ufizi, who isn't very obviously my fave at all, it's not like he has the biggest chapters, i love all my childern equally

Why not start right in the middle?

Why not jump ahead? Why not go observe the most unlikely destination the path of a human life can lead to?

The man whose heart is an open wound is lying on a table, waiting for the habile hands of man to finally cut this bleeding heart out of his chest.

His mind is blank save for the reminiscences of another pair of hands, larger, stronger and yet infused with much more care. He remembers those hands with a detached heart and dread the moment where it shall leave his chest and that particular memory will be flooded with the corresponding and appropriate feelings.

His dread is purely rational and yet he attaches the words of others to it _:_

_Gut sinking, shiver down the spine, sweat on the brow, heart up in the throat: how come all of these emotions are translated in the body?_

_My body is able and (still) in one piece. If I could feel I would still feel with my body. The faerie magic did not only make me a stranger to others, it made me a stranger in my own body. Without what all others call emotions, it would seem I do not know my own gut, my own spine, my own throat and least of all my own heart._

_I inhabit truly only my mind and my speech, but I use my body like a puppeteer._ _Every smile, every frown had to be learned, calculated and executed with the upmost artistry. So much effort I put in observing others and reproducing the way their bodies move. Does it mean that when the faerie magic is lifted, the dam will break and instincts will kick back in? I barely remember a time where I could smile without pushing my muscles to do so, I’m not sure I could bear that loss of control._

All the while thinking his heart beats, steady and slow, blood trickling down his ribs and unto the table beneath him.

The wet sensation, the liquid tickling his skin is familiar and grounding. He barely register it usually, apart from the regular look to check for stains on the outer layers of his clothes , but today it is like his nerves are acutely noting down every tiny movements of the drops of blood upon his skin, the oozing that comes with a slight wet whistle with each inhale, the way it goes along the curves of his chest, how it sometimes pools down closer to his stomach.

The fresh liquid layering upon the sticky planes of older blood, dark red on rusty brown.

That’s the colours his body has been painted with for twenty years, and the colours his life took as well. He can’t imagine his chest without its crust of dried blood and iron smell.

He knows that if he could feel, he would feel fear.

He closes his eyes against the memory of Ivan’s face torn and constricted by that very fear, when the main sail had caught on fire. For all the thinking he did of his own blood sliding drop by drop from his open heart, he refuses to settle on the thought of Ivan’s blood flooding his torn neck, his eyes drowning in white fear.

He feels nothing, of course, other than the physical loss of his second mate next to him.

He feels nothing, and in the adjacent room the clock maker and the surgeon are cleaning and sharpening their tools, asking the faeries of the land, air and urbanscape for their assistance in the removing of his heart. Joseph is preparing his ticking machines, oiling every cob, polishing the copper tubes that will pump his blood and keep it his chest from this day forward. And the faeries, noiseless, touchless, ageless faeries are getting ready to eat his corporal heart and give him his human heart back.

Ufizi, unfeeling, drowns in fear.

* * *

Why not start right in the middle?

With what everyone expects of the sea to do one day or another: to spit out the bodies it claims.

The sea keeps them close to her like an overbearing mother, like a child clutching its cloth doll too tight because it thinks that’s what one is supposed to do with it. But the sea is a strengthless limb. Those who live among the waves know that you can gently pry its fingers open if you want. The Merfolk often do so, and drag many things up from the ocean’s floor. Things that the sea intended to keep, they put in their halls, decorate their lives with the sunk parts of the above world. In return, they sometimes give back those lost at sea.

The Merfolk consider that Humans do not belong in the sea. They might sometimes make themselves a home in the space between the sea and the sky, gliding painstakingly on the waves, but underneath the water? That’s not their place, they shouldn’t stay here, not even to die.

They spotted the body at dawn.

The sailors on guard during the last dogwatch had barely stepped down to the insides of the ship that Padraig, halfway up the top mast had cried out.

Meher had ran to the side, thinking the man overboard was one of his own, fallen off the railing without a sound, but the body was far away from the ship’s flank.

It was a few yards back, made visible only by the new born sunrays reflecting feebly on its wet white torso. The peculiar thing about the corpse was that not only was it floating, but it was moving. Not moving like a breathing man trash around in the water, panicked and shouting for help, or like a slowly drowning man, up and down, up and down, swallowing more water with each breath. It wasn’t even drifting like a piece of floating wood would, it was softly moving toward the ship, just as much at ease in the water as the grey back of a dolphin.

When recalling this particular event later in the privacy of his own mind, the Devil’s Smile’s surgeon will not be able to dissociate the shiver of disgust that ran down his spine with the absolute awe he felt as he leant over the railing to see the corpse floating.

It was a man, huge and broad, with meaty arms and legs. His long yellow hair surrounded his head like a halo, and his entire body was deathly white. Barnacles and seaweed had made their home in the planes of his torso and legs.

It was the most disgusting spectacle that the surgeon had ever seen, in all of his years of dissecting bodies. The thought crossed his mind that what scared him was the complete absence of blood or lesions. This man was dead of a strengthless blow, smothered by the sea’s arms.

It was a horrifying view, and it shook him to his core with a deep sense of wrongness, to see this human body floating above the dark waters. 

The awe, however, came when his eyes focused on the waters around the corpse. Keeping it afloat, so that his nose and mouth were above the saltwater, were five green-scaled creatures.

Their webbed hands cupped delicately the person’s limbs, careful to not pierce the water-engorged skin. As the captain ordered his men to climb down and pick up the body, the doctor kept his wide eyes fixated on the merfolk, and he felt exhilarating joy when one of them stared back. I

ts eyes were the only splash of warm colour on its body painted in shades of green and grey. They were bright orange, flickering like a flame underwater. It did not smile, but from this eye only the surgeon could deduce that the lipless mouth hid rows and rows of fangs befitting a predator. The five tails of the Merfolks moved in unison and as soon as a rope was strung around the corpse to haul it up, they shivered with what seemed like approbation. They then curled in a lighting quick dance for few seconds, and disappeared back into the deep waters.

Maybe the doctor should ponder on the meaning of the fact that the memory of the merfolk’s eyes bore into his soul with more force than the miraculous reviving of the corpse a few minutes after it was laid down on the deck. The man heaved with laboured coughs, vomiting gallons of foaming seawater, his whole body shaking with the improbable force of life coming back to something that as good as dead a few moments ago.

The vomiting has its importance. If the merfolk had torn the poor man out of the embrace of the sea, he was still suffering from the forced breastfeeding it had performed on him.

The sea wants children so badly, but frail mortals that feed on air and bread cannot bare her nursing. Getting out of the clutch of the sea takes spitting all it tried to feed you, as ungrateful that may seem, especially for a seasoned sailor that muses they’re some adoptive child of the ocean.

Thus, the huge man spitted it all out, retching and coughing under the disbelieving stare of the Devil’s Smile’s crew.

* * *

Why not start right in a middle?

Why not stand at the shoulder of that very man that was once a corpse dragged up by the claws of the unknown creatures of the deep? Why not observe as he leans on the side of his frail and shaking boat to whisper into the mist?

His whispers turn into a soft humming, like one would hum to sooth a crying infant. There are no words to his lullaby, a simple repetitions of syllables, a string of sounds falling out of his lips, calming down and calling forward.

Lured by the warm husky voice, the spirits of the mist rise above the water, swirling, twirling, diving to and fro in a mesmerizing dance. Their own whispering voices answer in stumbling echoes, they are charmed by the sound and want to join in the fun, spirits of fog are like that. Leaning back slowly from the side to the helm, the sailor stirs the boat patiently, dodging the sharp edges of the reefs by listening the joyous voices of the misty faes echoing on the rocks and showing him the road to follow.

All the while, the man kept singing, the smile of his face never diminishing. And all the while, huddled in a blanket and half-hidden in the back of the boat, the surgeon watches attentively, trying to parse out the feelings blooming in his frozen chest.

* * *

Why not go back, why not jump directly to another point in the life of the man with a bleeding heart?

When he didn’t concern himself with fear. When all that mattered to him were the next step he would take and the certitude he would take it alongside the man he loved?

Now, that statement should not be taken lightly. We promised to give a comprehensive tale of the events that unfolded (as tangled they might seem for now) and that entails diving into the complexity of said tale without fear of disturbing the usual order of the universe a little bit.

Thus, Giordano Ufizi, the quite literally (almost) heartless captain of the Lorelei, cold-blooded killer and cunning officer of the dreaded Admiral Weber, was in love.

For people such as us, dear readers, in possession of the many cards that compose this story this may come as a surprise. Indeed, we both know Giordano Ufizi was victim of a failed spell cast by an unwilling fairy.

Spells of course are like delicate pastry recipes, when all the elements are not added in the exact steps at the exact temperature that’s required, it’s simply a recipe for disaster. Furthermore, the spell that was supposed to prove Ufizi’s undying loyalty to Weber was what fae calls a _Unmortal Love_ spell. Terribly tricky, and as untamed as a migrating bird, and that demands more than a simple order from a fae to be cast.

That’s what the poor imprisoned fae tried to explain to Weber, but under the threat of being devoured by the fanged beak of the Hungry God, it finally complied.

Instead of having his heart cleanly split from his chest and given to Weber’s hands -which would have insured that Ufizi himself would have faced no other consequences than to have his life be at the mercy of the Admiral-- the heart refused to go.

All it’s symbolic and magical functions were ripped out and scattered, but the physical heart stayed firmly in place. The fairy spell kept trying to get it out, ripping the stiches and tearing at the skin and tissues around it, but Ufizi’s heart is nothing if not stubborn.

Thus, when we say all symbolic functions of the heart were ripped from Ufizi, we obviously hint to the removal of his capacity to experience feelings. Now, it is a strange notion -and one scarcely explored by scientists- that the mechanic of the heart.

Faerie spells work that way : they are mostly a matter of meaning. The meaning we put into the different things of the world vary greatly from the physical reality of its existence. Flowers are a great example of this. Flowers are species of plants, the shape and colour they take are determined by adaptation to their environment. They are, in their essential existence, meaningless. Now, in our words, a _rose_ is _love_. It’s pride, it’s the beautiful thing unattainable because of its thorns, it’s the supreme ornament, it’s sophistication and simplicity all in one.

 _Dandelions_ are flowers too, resolutely as meaningless as roses, but to us they are _simple_ , wild things. They are joy, and childhood, and the pure freedom of living under the wide blue sky. They are crowns to many first loves, and reminders of days past.

 _Wheat_ , is a plant too, resolutely sprouting out of the ground, dying and living again. To us wheat is _nourishment_ , it’s the certitude in summer that winter is on the way, its blonde hair undulating like an ocean of gold. _Wheat_ is _labour_ , wheat is days spent in the scorching sun, and the wind that move the stones to crush it into flour, the hands that rolls the dough, and again the heat of the fire to bake it. Wheat is the certitude of bread and a full belly.

Such is the power of _meaning_ , and the source of magic. We need not parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme to cast a spell because of some inherent magic properties of their sap. We need them for the meaning they convey into the world, be it only the sound their names make put together in a song. That is _meaning_.

Thus, a _heart_ is definitely an organ, a muscle designated to pump blood to all parts of the body, it is an essential component of the human anatomy. But the heart is also subject to many different meanings that has nothing to do with its biological function such as our surgeon could observe and sketch and theorize.

In its symbolic meaning, the _heart_ is the throne of _love_ , the source of all feelings: it beats with fear, constricts with anxiety, flutters with joy, skips many beats for oh so many reasons, it breaks, it grows, the heart falls and fails.

Using the magic of meaning, you can give your heart.

If humans work into their brains and words and stories that a brave knight can give his heart to his lady fair, and she shall keep it in a box like her most precious jewel and from this day forward the knight will lay his life trustfully in her hands for if she was to cast away the heart, the knight would die a most lonely death then it is _true_.

It becomes _true_ in the working of magic.

When Giordano Ufizi set out to give his heart with an _Unmortal Love_ spell through anything but love, his heart -the meanings that make his heart exists on a magical plane- revolted. There was too much of a conflict between the meanings put forward to activate the spell, and the heart broke under that conflict.

Which brings us back to our starting point: all symbolic functions associated with the human heart left Ufizi. 

He ceased to feel. Joy, annoyance, fear, melancholy, anger, all feelings disappeared the moment the faerie magic touched him. He became the cold-blooded right hand of Admiral Weber, rational intelligence and sharp instincts making him the perfect war general and occasional executioner.

We really must apologize for this long digression. It was needed but it got us a little far from our original thought.

And the thought was love.

Giordano Ufizi, cut from all human emotions, is however most definitely _in love._

Looking at his First Mate Ivan walk into his cabin to bandage his chest with tender hands twice a day, and then see those very same hands grip a cutlass tighter and step in front of him in the middle of battle sparked no emotions in Ufizi’s chest.

It could not. 

However, it built trust.

Familiarity. Pride and respect. Ufizi could not _feel_ , but he wasn’t ignorant of others’ feelings. Being excluded from them, he even became more aware of them over the course of the years.

His vision wasn’t obscured by his feelings, and thus he could analyse and dissect the change of expressions on his First Mate’s face. Soon the slightest of frown or turn of the lips informed him of the mechanic of the man’s heart.

And he knew.

He saw the shiver than ran through the Ivan’s body when his captain’s heart was exposed. He saw the shape his eyes took when they talked alone at the helm when the night fell around them like soft rain. He noted the way the rhythm of their steps matched exactly, no matter the rolling of the ship under their feet.

He saw all that, and knew Ivan _loved_ him.

And thus, he pondered: he knew that this love was real even though he had no proof of his second in command’s feelings. Those were impossible to prove, and wasn’t that the curse of lovers?

As for his own, he had none, so that was settled easily enough. He had no feelings, but still he walked next to him and their steps fell into the same rythm, he valued and cared for him, trusted him completely, let him touch the ragged edges of his heart and even relearned to smile for him, so he knew every moment spend in his company where appreciated. And if that wasn’t love, then what was it?

Ufizi, completely unaware of the complexities we just explained, worked the most powerful of meaning magic: he said _if say I love you, then I love you._

He decided to create his own meaning, independent from all outside speech and all assumptions. He thought: _I decided that I love, what I feel doesn’t determine what I know._

He thought: _If I decide that I love then it’s true. I’m not falling in love, I’m not saying it in the passive voice, my love is active and true beyond all fluctuations. My love exists because I say it does. I rely on nothing but my words, my heart is a broken piece of flesh, why should I trust it? Even if it was intact, I would not._

Thus, there was a time when Ufizi loved, loved with all the strength of his will.

He ignored the silence of his heart to say it, loud and clear, in whispers into his lover’s ear and with gestures, he showed his trust and gratitude for his existence every day.


	3. Tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we tell tales, again, of love, of magic and of gods

Let’s jump ahead on more time.

Or maybe go back. It depends. We promise that we are trying to make this retelling as clear as we possibly can, but it is an immense task for a single voice to sing. We shall try harder.

This moment comes after the fire. When there are not even embers to watch grow cold and grey and mourn over. Such are the fires that catch on the home made by sailors between the sea and sky.They disappear beneath the water without graves marking the point where they fell.

Armand watches from their own fleeing ship the remains of the fire and his throat constricts. Many good men fell under the waves today, both from his crew and on the enemy’s side.

Tears are making their way from his airway to his eyes and he welcomes them gladly. It means _I’m still human_ , he thinks, _it means that I can still see blood be shed and be moved. It means I’m not becoming like him._

Armand remembers the fury on Meher’s face and his entire body shudders as a sob escapes him. _Who is he? Who has taken my love and replaced him with a beast? This has gone too far. He is lost. Just when I hoped we could get out of this life, create something new, our house by the cliff, the flowers by the door, the sea breeze entering like an old friend through the window of the bedchamber, one bed, our bed, we could have had it , we had it, I had already stepped over the threshold and when I turned around he wasn’t there. He’s gone. My love is gone and I can’t find him, a stranger took his face_ _._

Armand has no idea what to do, his mind bent over by the blow of this joint destruction : the burning carcasses of Weber’s and the Emperor’s ships, undistinguishable as they sunk into the waves and the way Meher’s face contracted as he saw Ufizi swim to safety, the ugliness of his rage that shattered everything.

_I never thought he was ugly. Not a second. Not when I arrived on his shores and all my fellow Frenchmen snickered at his dark skin and crooked nose, his eyes that seem too-close together in a permanent untrusting squint._

_Not a second. Not when I broke down the door of his gaol and picked him up, bloody and filthy, covered in his own excrement, fear and despair sticking to his skin even after we bathed him twice._

_Not a second did I find him anything less than beautiful and lovable and mine, even when the scars healed patchy and rough and he wouldn’t look at me in the eyes, wouldn’t let me touch him, wouldn’t let his tears flow. Oh, how beautiful was he on deck, head held high, sun shining down on him like a blessing meant for him alone, and rightfully so. How delicate and divine was he when we kissed as the wind filled the sails, we were flying, How I love him, where he is gone?_

If his love is gone, if he can yell to his face with his foreign mouth, his unrecognizable lips, if he can hit him and leave him behind on the deck they walked so many time side by side without a single glance from his furious eyes, then why is he still here?

He has a house by a cliff waiting for him, with the breeze caressing the heather, the seagulls laughing, he has a home to come back to. _I wish he knew he has a home there too. I wish he knows he can come to me. I can’t fool myself; I love him still. I love him and that’s why I need to leave. I can’t stay here and watch my love become a stranger that hates me. I need to leave to protect my love, so he’ll find it untouched, unsullied. When he comes back (I know he will) I will satisfy his parched throat with the clear water that is our love. We shall cry and hold hands and all will be forgiven. We will live under the sky and the sea shall lull us to sleep._

* * *

Let’s pause for a moment.

We can sit down for a while outside the tale and let our attention out of focus for a bit.

Minutes of inattention in the middle of a lecture are essential to its understanding, just as important as practical examples and definitions. Inattention from the central subject allow the focus to turn inward and let the thoughts submerge the speech that is given. One’s thoughts feed off what was heard and react to it with sincere eagerness.

Thus, we encourage you, dear reader, to be inattentive. When reading this particular pause paragraph, or during any of the others.

If at one point in your deciphering of our glyphs you find yourself thinking of an entirely different thing, please, do not pull on your mind’s leach to force it to follow our path. Let it roam. If it is thinking of something else, maybe it’s important. If your mind is blank and all you can think of is how much you want to close the damn book, go ahead. We would not resent you, there are moments where our voice tired and we closed our mouth too.

  
A wandering mind is a beautiful thing. It is shy and fragile and we think one should encourage it. A wandering mind wants nothing more than to be noticed, give it this pleasure. We can wait. This tale is already written down, it was a journey enough to get it to this point. If your thoughts require your attention, the words will stay here, tucked and warm.

* * *

You’re back? You never left? Either way, let’s jump back into our tale.

We feel the wind might change, and if it does, there won’t be time for this particular story anymore. Or maybe it simply would not feel as appropriate.

  
Do you ever feel like the wind is trying to tell you something?

When you walk down an empty street with the wind in your back pushing you forward, pressing into your hands, and it surrounds you with dust and fallen leaves?

Doesn’t it whisper? Doesn’t it whistle soft nothings into your ears, red-tipped from the cold of its kisses?

We swear we heard it shout across the dead of the night, in between the million snowflakes softly piling up on the ground. The wind sees so much, it loves to tell tales of the places it has been.

This story may be set on the sea, but it’s from the wind we heard it first. We suppose the wind was so eager to share this story because it has a part in it.

The spirits of the wind are joyful and happy things, but they have their pride. If they can tell everyone how swiftly they can fly, how many trees leaves they can seduce into singing, how many roofs they can dishevel, and how fast they can make a ship go by blowing in its sails, they will. Their bragging is mostly harmless, except when they get competitive with each other.

Ever wondered how a typhoon or a tornado appears? Simply imagine two wind spirits all worked up at each other and fighting like children do, rolling around on a carpet, ready to bite and to use their elbows, too.

  
The wind was there at the very beginning of this story, it was there before the story began.

The wind spirits played along the shores of Persia and attached themselves to Meher long before he became the captain of the Devil’s Smile.

Something about the boy intrigued them, maybe it was his intelligence in all things nautical, the way he always boarded on a ship like a conqueror stepping on an undiscovered land. Maybe it was the way the jewels covering his skin and clothes rang, gold rings clinking against sliver chains and copper plates. Maybe it was the sound of his laughter covering the ringing the precious metals, and echoing on the lapis azuleros ceramic tiles of the palace.

Maybe it was the quiet anger that already inhabited him, and sometimes made his eyes burn with that could only be described as the potential for madness. Whatever the wind saw in him, whatever the reasons it might have had, all we can say is that the wind was always on his side.

  
That alliance proved helpful many times once he started his career under the black flag.

The Pirate Emperor modus operandi was to be fast, to pound on the slave merchant ships like a tiger, and flee on the waves as quick as a flying fish.

When liberating slaves, they couldn’t start a battle if they had the slightest chance to lose. As pirates, they did not care for their lives when boarding a merchant ship loaded with spices, cotton and fabric that were as good as gold ringing in their pocket, but under the orders of the Pirate Emperor, they couldn’t risk endangering the men and women kept in the lower decks.

So, speed was of the essence, and what better trump card could the Emperor have in his sleeve but a man blessed with the friendship of the wind itself?

When Meher stepped on deck the wind would appear at his side, breezily happy, and all the Persian needed to do was nod for it to run into the sails, push them with all the force of its all-encompassing lungs , its fingers stretching to the smallest sails, blowing jokingly into the sailors’ shirts as well. And while the Emperor’s ships nearly floated off the waves under the force of the steady wind, the slavers ships took root on the sea incapable to move. The wind cheered with its sibilant voice and caressed the skin of the newly-freed men stepping under the sky again.

  
We already said so, vassal deities like the wind spirits attach themselves readily to mortals.

The winds of Persia chose to follow Meher’s steps very far away from their birth coasts, and just like Armand, they followed him out of love and reverence into the unknown.

Just like Armand, they saw the way his gaze turned more and more crazed by the desire of revenge, the way he pushed the poor torn hull of the Devil’s Smile always further into the uncharted horizon. With fear and helplessness, they felt the way he captured the air into his lungs and refused to let it go, out of spite for the rest of breathing things. The wind, scared but hopeful, stayed on Meher side even when Armand left.

  
Its love is not a mortal love, it isn’t a love of compromise, choices, effort and somehow certitude.

Humans work to make love real, every look they give to a stranger is a wistful prayer whishing against all hope that love at first sight might actually exists. Humans lock eyes and hands as if to say, _we can make two become one, we can try and even if we see we failed, it doesn’t matter we will ignore the truth until it accepts we are not giving up._

The wind followed Meher because it said it would do so at one point, and since it said so, it has become the consequences of this promise. The wind is not now the same one as it was before giving its word; it’s a new being. It is not _the-wind-that-is-free,_ it is _the-wind-that-promised_. One could say it has pledged its body and soul to this promise, but it gave much more than body and soul, it gave its _word_. And when you are only a voice, your word is all you have.

* * *

Let’s start at the beginning again.

Let’s go back. We fear we have overlooked some precisions you will need to grasp the full picture of our tale.

We mentioned the Hungry God in passing, as a threat looming over the ones under Weber’s boot, as a force powerful enough to scare a fairy into submission.

Let’s go back. Let’s paint a picture of this Old God that might make you understand how a god cannot die, but can change, and how that is somehow worse for the ones amid whom they live.

  
Let’s spin a tale within a tale. Let’s say we, the voice, heard this tale from another voice, long ago. Let’s say this voice heard it from another, and so on, and all these voices that were at this time all ears were struck with the sad and terrifying beauty of this tale. And that is why our voice can carry it to you, and your eyes that stand for ears. Listen then. Read closer.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Once upon a time ,there were two gods.

One was huge and towering, the other tiny and meek.

One took the form of beautiful bird, with a red beak and glossy black feathers that shined with all the colours painted on the earth.

The other could take all sorts of forms but always seemed to prefer the tiniest of things. A snowflake, a speck of dust, a grain of sand. When it walked alongside the first god, it took the form of a bug, a tiny moth or a bumblebee, just so it could tell where it was by its buzzing.

The first god we will call the Proud for now. The second we shall name the Shy.

Together they walked the Earth well before there was a voice to say they did, and once a voice appeared, it was suddenly struck mute by the awe they inspired.

Truly they were a sight to behold. Of course, one would only see the Proud God first, with its glistening feathers and its shadow passing over the land like an immense cloud. But then one would realize it was holding something in its hand, precious and hidden, each step delicately taken as so it didn’t disturb whatever it was in his palm just like a child cups a cricket that wandered into the house to gently take it to the door. And one could not help but wonder whatever it was that was kept safe in the hands of the tall and shiny God.

  
The two Gods were the best of friends, they loved each other dearly and enjoyed nothing more than the other’s company. They talked for days and night, walking the earth from end to end and were never bored to watch the sunrises and sunsets together.

What could they talk about, you might ask? It is hard to tell, for their discussion had begun so long ago, and had been through so many digressions over the years, that even them could difficultly recall what was the main subject. However, we can tell you they found great joy in those talks, as you could hear from miles the roaring laughter of the Proud God, and if you happened to be right next to them, the buzzing chuckles of the Shy God.

But unfortunately, this tale in a tale is not about the string of innumerable happy moments. We wish it was, we really do.

But as you might have guessed from the precedent chapters, we focus more on the instant where something breaks than on the long life it spent holding up just fine. We’re sorry for it. The monotony of happiness is worth writing stories about.

About the daily hours spend in harmony with an internal melody, when everything seems to be in tune with that melody and one is surrounded not with some strong and heady joy, or exhilarating euphoria, heart ready to burst from the suddenness of passion for living – but by the calm sense of being _fine_. Just, deliciously, lazily, dreamily _fine_.

That kind of joy we barely notice, until its wave reaches gently up to the shore of our minds and the instant that is covered by it is clear, and warm, and soft.

Such is not our story to tell. This tale is similar to the tales of old, and its calm beginning is only building up to sorrow and tears told in the most cruelly neutral of voices.

The two Gods liked to play games. The Shy one especially. It was playful and enthusiastic over every new form of amusement, be it riddles, charades, or puns. It would turn into a small monkey or a child in order to play hopscotch or juggle with actual legs and arms.

One day while it was looking over a game of marbles with equal excitement and apprehension from being surrounded by so much noise, a kid, bored by marbles since he had lost all of his, proposed they played another game. That’s how the Shy god learned the existence of hide and seek.

It loved the game so much, had so much fun staying silent and filled with a particular joyful form of dread until someone found it that it couldn’t wait to play it with its best friend.

Indeed, when playing with human children, the Shy god would make an effort and stay in only one form. If it was a funny and friendly dog, it would stay so. If it was a gold-eyed, gold-haired boy with too thin limbs and too pale skin, it would stay so. It didn’t want to scare the poor kids, not when its own fun was at stake. But it thought that if it was to play hide and seek with its best friend, it would have so much more fun, it could shapeshift at will, hide in always tinier spaces, or make itself fly above the clouds, and flee down again with the rain, and the Proud god would run after it, call it, look for it and they will laugh so hard once it’ll find it!

  
It swiftly went back to its friend and explained the game to it. The Proud god was instantly interested, and was ready to play at once. The Shy god, overjoyed, asked it to turn around and count down to one hundred, and then it could go and look for the other god.

As soon as the Proud god began counting, the Shy god shapeshifted into a tiny, snow-white moth and flew away straight south, giggling all the way. Where it went, it is uncertain, but we can be sure it was a perfect hiding place.

This is when the story shifts from joyful to bleak. The Proud god reached one hundred and promptly began looking. At first, it walked with long steps, looking all around, crossing over seas and mountains, its beak open in an immense smile. The god couldn’t find its friend this way.

So, intrigued it came back to the starting point and crouched down to look under each blade of grass, under each rock, its immense claws scrapping the ground. It had destroyed the entire valley in his search and it couldn’t find its friend this way.

Remembering that the other god had been flying when they parted, it turned his eyes to the sky and reached for the clouds, parting them like curtains. Not looking where it set his feet, the god wrecked many cities and ruined many fields filled with crops and cattle.

Yet, the Shy god wasn’t in any of the clouds of the sky. Remembering that its friend liked to be a tiny fish sometimes, the Proud god walked into the oceans and rummaged through the sand of its deeps. Whales, squids and broken corral lay dead on the shores of all seas for all the time it spends looking, parting each and every wave.

  
The Proud god had no notion of the amount of time that had passed since the last time it saw its little friend, but in human words it had been an eternity, the amount of time that makes an event be ancient history, unreachable, lost for lack of memories even the secret ones told and shared from grandmothers to mother to daughters.

Enough time that the God responsible of so much destruction wasn’t admired and revered anymore, but feared.

Enough time for a God to receive another name. In human words it was no longer the _Proud_ god, it was the _Hungry_ god.

And Hungry it was.

For even if it couldn’t put words on the time that passed, it did live that time. And time changed the god, as it kept looking, it started to forget what that was it was looking and why.

The love and joyful anticipation it put into finding its friend slowly became obsession and anger, it could not find any other reason why it kept scratching at the earth and opening mountains up. It missed his friend, and that feeling of loss turned to lack, ut was lacking something he needed desperately, and that it hates, and that it needs to devour in order to be whole. Its lush plumage became sparse torn and dusty, its eyes hollowed out and its bleak turned to ghostly white.

It was a skeletal figure roaming the world, claws ripping its surroundings apart trying to find something, something that would satisfy it, that would calm its devouring hunger.


	4. Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words, words, words.

Our voice is tired.

You read it as words etched on soft paper, calm and certain, but right now as we speak our voice to us seems rough, croaky and so terribly tired.

This retelling is not a linear thing, you know. It is circumstanced in the whirlpool of many other moments, and our voice can be needed elsewhere. We cannot always be speaking those written words. Sometimes we have to shout in the streets and let our voices be heard – or most certainly let to die on the closed windows of the white stone façades. We have to speak in foreign tongues, in loving words, in fed up sighs, in screams of anguish.

We are not always picking the words you are reading. We are saying those only for a fleeting moment, enough for them to be eternal if someone cares to listen, but otherwise not enough for them to smoother us by their omnipresence.

We are a voice, and we have a story to tell, but we are not this story. We are to be distinguished from the words that fall out our mouth. If you need proof of this, see how hard it is for us at this instant to form those words.

If we were pressed to tell another segment of the tale, about the Devil’s Smile, or of the cruel turn Weber’s lips takes when he talks to the Hungry god, or of Ufizi’s new copper ticking heart reflecting the light of the Mediterranean sun or of Padraig and Diego sitting close together perched on the crow’s nest and whispering their half-conceived dreams under the shooting stars of the passing Tropics, if you were to ask us to say those things in details you would find our words clumsy, shaky and unsatisfactory.

We know these things; they are painted in our mind but sometimes we cannot tell them. There are times for tales and times for silence.

Times to listen to an outside voice, and times to listen to the beating of your own heart. Times to be guided and times to ponder over which path to take. Times to focus on the intricate puppetry that is bringing those paper dolls to life and times to let them lay boneless – wordless, on the ground.

Such are the times we follow, like the tides come and go over the stretched beach, likewise our words need not always fall onto the paper.

They need to retract into their source and disappear into the unformulated, the vague, where those named paper dolls are figures and feelings only. Where the atmosphere of the sea and the sky and the land is composed of colours and music but certainly not of the words you heard precedingly. Where no end nor beginning ever existed, only snapshots of burning existence – that we tried to convey throughout this retelling.

 _Words, words, words_ , was once said, and with truth. It’s all we have and as everything we can hold in our hands or can envision in our minds, it’s not much.

* * *

Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start at a beginning.

In the unbreathable darkness below deck, below the water, a slave strangles a guard with his chains and once the body falls on the other shackled bodies the slave is a free man.

The spirits in the water that surrounded the ship like a funeral procession sing out of joy for once.

The free legs and the free arms rise into free air and drop other free men into the open jaws of the ocean. The water spirits let the sea eat them. The boat glides on the water unflinching, unbothered by the change of hands upon its wheel and riggings. Birds of white plumage dance with the open sails and sing in unison with the voices vibrating under the waves and those shouting above it.

The man who first grabbed the guard under deck and broke his neck stands under the sky and his eyes are riveted on the flag that flies on the top mast.

Shaking his aching limbs awake he jumps on the rigging and climbs up to it. His hands grab the ropes as tightly as the shackles did his limbs and it’s a small revenge. When he’s finally at the highest point of the mast, he takes the gold and red flag firmly between his fingers and rips it in one swift movement. Listening to the roars of approval under him he is about to throw it into the sea to kill the ship’s masters absolutely, but watching at the sky he keeps his hand firmly closed over the fabric.

The fast winds make his long-imprisoned skin shiver with both pleasure and fear. He covers his wide shoulders with the ripped flag and feels nothing but determination.

 _Only one makes a flimsy coat_ , he thinks. _I shall need more, much more._

_Many flags on the sea, many ships underneath them, and under the ships men and women that need freedom just like they need air. And under them, the sea I shall cross to give them this freedom._ _And their cold bodies I will cover them with my wide coat of stolen flags. I will cover the sea with this coat._

_I will not stop until no red and gold flies at the top of a mast anymore, I will not stop until they are all torn down and sewn upon my shoulders. I will make the king that flies this red and gold and deals in our red blood against gold coins hate his ermine cloak because it reminds him too much of mine, and how heavy it is around his neck will make him choke and fear my hands._

_This king will fear me, as will every coward power of the lands. I will reign as Emperor over the sea and rob them of what the think they can own, destroy all their puny plans. The songs that fill my blood I sing them upon the sea and no one will ever force me to shut up ever again._

* * *

Let’s go back to the islands. The same island that was the colour of Diego’s skin, and tried desperately to hold him back, and show him the truth he could find in the twisted roots of the sugar cane and under the tepid shade of the traveller’s tree.

If the island kept trying to hold Diego back, it could not care less for Padraig, and yet they were both born on its brown soil, and their first crying breath was stifled by its dust.

But the island and the islanders didn’t care for Padraig white skin, with its freckles seemingly falling of it like shooting stars due to the constant peeling of his sunburns. They didn’t care for his fiery red hair that shined in the noonday sun and could blind you from yards away.

The only thing that scared them more than his striking moss-green eye marbled with streaks of gold was the piercing sapphire-blue of his left eye. In between those to foreign windows, you could find all the shades of the placid sea around the island’s beaches, and such a clear reminder of its looming presence in the middle of the land, alongside with the small body they were attached to digging around a field to find roots to nibble on, suddenly looking up at you with those mismatched eyes, and that impossible hair and that corpse-like skin was just _too much._

Diego’s mother, for example, had had at least the politeness to _tan_. Her skin might once have been as livid and sickly as little Padraig’s but years spent under the sun and the wind had gave her complexion a healthy chestnut shade. At least her hair had always been close to dark. At least her eyes were a reasonable deep brown. And when Diego was born, he took after his father’s skin anyway, so that particular crisis was averted.

The island was used to resonate with the laughter of growing children, but the close birth of Diego and Padraig felt like a discordant tone in the usual melody.

Padraig’s parents had been strangers, not meant to stay, they had simply been washed on these shores by the fantasy of a stormy day. Their boat had needed repairs, and supplies after throwing theirs overboard in order to reach the port. They were meant to stay three weeks maybe on the dusty shore and then head for the continent – to a growing city where their destiny and no one else waited for them. Three weeks turned to two months, and then four and suddenly it was time for the woman to give birth. She survived the birth, only for her husband and her to be taken by one of the island’s many fevers not two weeks later.

The child was found in the abandoned hut, and when the islanders finally made up their minds to give him to the captain of the ship that brought him there –one could argue he was a passenger since the start and his parents had pay his journey’s fee in advance, the ship was just a dot on the horizon.

Young Padraig had nothing but a name, and an appearance that made every inhabitant of the island cringe visibly when he walked in stumbling steps toward them. Only Diego’s mom, who had been left on these shores not unlike Padraig’s late parents did not flinch away from the boy sand-white hands and too-clear eyes.

She had loved the island the moment she had set foot on it.

The reasonable thing to do would have been to continue her journey, to go to that other island where there was a house , and in the house a man who kept writing her letters just like he had when he was just a teenage boy living a city away, like they were not separated by half a world and ten years of growth, and in this house she was supposed to marry him and she would stay there inside those four walls and recreate what people with their shade of skin and clear eyes did half a world away.

But when she had stepped down the boat – _only a stop in the journey, soon to be behind us, milady, here, stay in the shade,_ the air was so warm and the light was so pure and blinding she felt something in her chest loosen and fall on the dusty ground. Her hair was covered in sweat from just walking in the main street of the port, and she felt every pore of her skin absorb the pure colours that surrounded her.

She had never seen reds so red, greens so green, she had never dared to believe the sky could be so big and so comically blue.

She spent three days exploring the island, and when she climbed up to the highest hill and let her eyes trail on the shores, she realized she could trace a clear line dividing where the land gave way to the sea. To make sure she wasn’t dreaming she kept looking all around, spinning faster and faster until everything was blurry and green, brown and immensely blue.

She felt so happy then, when she fell on the ground, sweat dropping into her eyes, legs and breath shaky, she was so happy, _finally a place I know ends. Finally, a place where if someone is to come or go, I will simply have to climb up here to see who they are and where they went._

_Finally, a place with some sort of logic to it, some control. There is the land and there is the sea and that’s it. The land is human, and it’s where we live and it’s all good. The sea is where people come from, it’s the place of movement. I crossed it once, I will not do it again. Why was I the one who crossed the sea? Why wouldn’t he come to Vienna? I wouldn’t have loved him in Vienna, but if he had crossed the sea then he would have known that. I will stay here, I will stay here in the light, in the colours, why didn’t I know such colours existed, how little do I know, how much did they hide from me?_

The day the boat was to depart she took all what she had and hid in the forest. Not wanting to miss the tide for a runaway bride, the captain ordered his crew to set sail, and she was left in her unexpected paradise.

The following years were though, getting the trust of the islanders was the hardest part but when they realized she had stayed on purpose, and saw the sort of ecstatic look in her eyes whenever the island changed appearance, in the rain, in the storm, in the blue hours of the morning or the sinking yellow of dusk they understood she was in love and warmed up to her.

Loving one’s native land is like sharing a lover, it is sometimes nice to see reflected on someone’s else face the burning passion that became one’s calm and serene love. A new lover love’s is full of surprises and moments of gasping adoration. The flaws of the island like the scorching heat of the midday or constant presence of mosquitoes in the raining months, if they weren’t perks were still qualities that made the island and as such should be loved equally.

The islanders mocked quietly this passionate love in between them, but they couldn’t say they absolutely hated the heat or the mosquitoes either. She had decided to stay, and her determination hadn’t faltered, and that had earned her some sort of respect.

So when she had seen little Padraig living in the streets with no idea what he had done to earn such a fate, and seemingly left to his own devices thus robbing of any chance to ever understand his difference or work to fix it, she decided to take him in and raise him alongside her son.

It wasn’t a simple thing to do. Padraig screamed and kicked and refused to sleep under a roof, not even under a blanket. His shrills disturbed Diego who was a strikingly calm child and would make him burst into tears. He didn’t seem to see Padraig as the source of his anguish, but simply extremely sad that Padraig himself seemed to be sad and angry. Padraig on the other hand has no idea why Diego cried, and found the sight deeply unsettling. Most of the time when Padraig started yelling and biting at his clothes and basically anything that came close to his mouth, little Diego would cry and try to hug Padraig to make the both of them feel better. Padraig would suddenly freeze and swiftly run away from the house.

That vision of humanity reduced to a push and pull between screams, tears, hands reaching and feet running away bloomed many a philosophical reflexion in Diego’s mother’s mind but those mostly evaporated like the sweat on her brow as she ran to catch Padraig to bring him home.


	5. Conversations

Looking back on those early days, Padraig’s fugue upon the ocean was understandable. The island had never given him any love, the land was only dirt under his feet, he had no reason to stay. Even her care, despite all her efforts, had never equalled the grounding quality of a loving family. Diego’s father was a good man, with a lot of love to give, but he was an islander and could not consider Padraig his son. He tried but it was beyond him. The moment those eyes set on him, he heard the voices of his parents and friends calling him liar and a madman.

Less understandable, was Diego following him.

Diego was everyone’s favourite, he was the calm type of children that looks up at you with unbelievably wide eyes, and without asking for anything you know you would give the world to them. He was always caught up in his own world, muttering happily to himself while walking the serpentine dirt roads of the island, and he would climb up trees to pick fruit and flowers to bring to his mother.

Diego was the caricature of a child growing up under the tropics sun, dozing off in the midday heat only to go running through the forest until dusk. Padraig followed his steps like a pale shadow, Diego’s hand pulling him forward to whatever new bush or trove he had found to make his kingdom for the day.

Maybe the day Padraig left was the day Diego discovered the sea.

One would think he became aware of its existence way sooner, living on a tiny island makes the sea hard to ignore, but that wasn’t the case. Of course, he knew the sea existed, but he had never registered its existence as something other than water. There was the water you drank, and the water you pissed, and the one that fell from the skies half of the year and there was the groves of still and putrid water you could go to play dirty games and they was the salty water that moved and pushed the white sails around like the wind pushes the birds in the sky.

One could think that Diego understood the deeper meaning of the sea when his father left and never came back.

When his mom kept a strong face as everyone thought he was dead, and through the fury that took her when the rumours started coming in and said he had gone and enrolled in a pirate ship. The thing is, Diego understood how a ship and a crew could take a man, but the thing he didn’t understand was his mom’s initial reaction.

Why would she ever put up a strong and indifferent face at the idea that his dad was lost at sea. He had cried, rivers of tears followed by long desperate hours of dry sobbing, he had shrieked and yelled when he understood his dad was gone. Why she wouldn’t do the same and simply accept that the sea had the right to take her man was beyond him. It didn’t make any sense.

This deferential respect to something stronger and meaner, that could on a whim break and erase? It wasn’t something that Diego, from the height of his ten years of life, was willing to accept. That his mother would recover her anger upon learning that it was his father’s decision, plain and simple, an escape, a cowardice perhaps, something terribly wrong and terribly human, that seemed strange to him. So he saw the sea as a mass of moving water, that sometime had the fantasy to wreck ships and drown men – something unattractive and that he felt he had the right to scorn at and simply ignore.

So maybe it was Padraig’s desire that made him truly discover the sea.

They were laying together on Diego’s bunk, the moon was rising and shining brightly, its white light almost made the warm and moist air seem fresh on their skin. They had been talking for a while, in hushed whispers as to not wake their mom sleeping a few feet away on the other side of the room. Right now, they had settled into the comfortable silence that comes in those kinds of nightly conversations, walking on a wire above the depths of sleep. Diego felt himself staggering, his eyes closing slowly, his ears muffling the shrieks of the birds and the foraging of the animals all around the night when Padraig whispered, his breath pushing his eyelids open :

“You can’t hear the sea here”

“What do you mean?” ,he slurred out, shuffling a bit to somewhat wake himself.

“You can’t hear the sea. It’s so close but you can’t hear it, the animals noise covers it.”

Diego made a sound of acknowledgment, his mind still too blurry from failed sleep and tiredness to understand the point.

“Sometimes...” Padraig paused and darted his eyes to look at Diego for a split second before continuing. “Sometimes I go sleep on the beach. Just to hear the sound of the waves. The air is clearer there too.”

Diego knew Padraig sometimes couldn’t stand the walls of their house, but the notion of him slipping out of his bunk in the dead of the night to go sleep on the cold dewy sand, at the mercy of the wild animals and the elements filled him with dread.

“Does Mom know?” ,he asked, and regretted saying it the moment the words left his lips.

On cue, Padraig moved away from him, sitting up in a tense manner

“Of course she doesn’t, but not for long I guess –

“I won’t tell her, I swear,” , Diego cut him, shuffling closer. Even if Padraig didn’t seem to want to leave, the thought of it made Diego mad at himself. “I said that because I’m worried. Why would you go sleep alone by the sea? What if…”

“I’m not alone, there’s the sea” Padraig whispered, bringing his knees closer to his chest.

Diego had no idea what that meant, deep down he was still angry at the sea for taking his father and smothering his mother’s anger, he couldn’t view the sea as an acceptable sleeping companion. What he knew though, was that Padraig had a lot of thoughts in his head, and those thoughts never seemed to make sense to him at first, but if he couldn’t get them, when he tried really hard, he could get the feeling that birthed them.

Padraig had a lot of thoughts and Diego had a lot of feelings, and none of them had a lot of words. Somehow, they made it work.

“What is it about the sea?” , Diego muttered, searching Padraig’s eyes, gleaming each in a different shade of aquamarine in the soft moonlight.

A pause filled by the chirping birds calling their mates back to the nest.

“It’s wide. It’s….When I walk down the beach I always think that on the horizon I could fit a thousand more of our island.” Diego’s lips turned into a fond smile, _What a thing to think._

“It’s so big, and fresh, and there is so much life in it. Here you can’t hear yourself think or breathe. All the birds, and the monkeys, and the men shouting, the women singing, and I can never join. Down there, the sea is just breathing, with her big watery lungs, and I follow her rhythm just fine. The sea has no eyes, has no voice, she can’t see my skin or scorn me.”

Diego gently reached to take Padraig’s hand in his own, cradling it softly, taking the time to ponder his brother’s words.

The familiar tune of the focused silence relaxed Padraig , who let his legs slide flat on the bunk again. In his thought-filled mind, the silence his brother created to try to understand him was the same sort of silence as the sea, a silence filled with the slow and repetitive movement of breathing, surrounding him but never truly mixing with him, leaving him with his own individuality despite the desire to be the exact same, to never be parted, like two magnets pressed together but never quite touching.

He preferred this oil and water intimacy to the mindless blending that categorized the rest of the people he knew. They blended with each other and left him out, assumed he couldn’t fit, couldn’t adapt – only Diego, sweet and kind Diego, (young and naïve Diego, he sometimes thought despite them being the same age) ever thought that maybe he should be the one to adapt to Padraig instead. It had begun with him playing in the shade instead of the high noon sun to mind his burning skin, and it continued with him staying silent while holding his hand, trying to wrap his mind around whatever strange thing had just fallen out of his lips.

“Why the sea though? The trees have no eyes either. The rocks don’t talk. The little stream behind the house whistles but never yells. When we sleep together no one is seeing you because we both close our eyes, no one is scorning you because our mouths are open but silent. You don’t have to go all the way down there to find silence in sleep.”

_Here you go brother, telling my thoughts exactly, exposing the holes I try to hide from my own brain._

“The silence of the sea is simply different. It’s big. It covers everything. When I’m sleeping here, I feel small, and alone, and constantly hurting. By the sea I’m still small , I’m just a little bit less alone, but at least I’m not hurting. Or numb. I feel like I’m alive.”

Now, here we have to say that of all things his brother might have said that night, or every other night before and after, that particular observation wormed its way to Diego’s brain with a singular determination.

Young and naïve was an apt description of the boy, and at the time, he wouldn’t have been that angry if anyone had called him that to his face. He was stubbornly and consciously naïve. He felt everything, and once he let the feeling go it was gone until it came back. He lived by a sort of dream logic where when things appeared or changed, it was as if they had always been this way.

After his father left, the family had much less money, they had to move to another part of the island, the boys wore the same clothes for years, and they had no shoes anymore. In Diego’s mind, that wasn’t a problem. He took it all in stride, he never pondered on anything. We must be clear: he felt the changes keenly, and suffered from them. But he did only for a bit. Then, he got used to the new feelings and suffered no more.

Padraig suddenly saying that you could feel being alive threw a rock unto the still surface of his mind.

Diego had never thought about whether he was alive, or numb, or hurting, or alone. He felt those, he knew he must have at some point, but he never had realized that he could chase a feeling, that your actions had consequences on your feelings.

He had thought life was like a road : you walked on it and on each sides were things that could happen to you , and you could somehow see them coming but you had no way to pick which one you wanted, or go off the road to escape them completely. You just had to keep walking, and bear what happened to you until the natural end of the road. That’s what happened to his mother: a boat had guided her to the island and given her the sun, the mosquitoes, a husband, and two sons that could not be more different and yet could not be anything other than twins, she had not picked any of that herself. That’s what happened to his father, his own road was guided by the sea at every turn, it had made him a fisherman, it had given him a wife, and finally it had taken him entirely as a payback for all its gifts. He had always thought Padraig’s had a similar road under his feet, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure.

Padraig sometimes felt alive and sometimes he didn’t.

That didn’t make any sense for Diego, who only ever felt alive. Numbness was not part of his vocabulary; numbness sounded a little too much like death. And suddenly two thoughts followed: maybe he hadn’t been truly alive all this time after all, and more frightening, there were times where Padraig didn’t feel alive , and that’s why he went to lay by the sea like a piece of polished driftwood washed away on the shore, half buried in the sand, textured like a bone sticking out of a dog’s gaping jaws, the white of his skin vulnerable underneath the white of the moon.


	6. Encounters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which both parties present are having an horrible , no-good, very bad day , even if technically, one more than the other.
> 
> (tw suicide ideation, and torture)

_Mahrokh_ _,_ he remembered, _the name of my mother. Born under a full moon, and blessed with its aloof beauty._

_The taste of pomegranates,_ he remembered, _the first thing I desired so badly I had to steal it, and later realized I owned it – the taste of disappointment._

_The sea, the sea, the sea,_ he forced himself to think _, where is the sea, why do I have to conjure it in my mind, I can’t recall ever being parted from her._ _Skin on skin. Arms around me. The smell of his hair._

_If I think of him all else will vanish, I’m not sure I want that. For all is written above, and our destinies unfold, if I write on my mind that nothing exists but his memory, I shall never live to see the reality of him again. I will die in the thought of his arms._

_I shall not think of him or his kisses. I cast his eyes out of my mind. Be gone, my love, my life, I must be strong, just for a little while longer._

_The first bite of fever,_ he remembered, _how it came back every year with the season of rains, to hold me, to devour me – I never remembered what I screamed for in my dreams but the servants’ eyes told me enough. The fear. The first look of fear, and the second, and the third, how I never stopped counting. I_ _read that it is what gives power to some more glorious men than me. I never stopped fearing the fear in all those eyes, two, four , six, eight , ten, multiplied – who am I but fear mirrored in those eyes?_

He shivered and retched, blood mixed with bile dropping pathetically from his gaping mouth to the floor , and he had no saliva to beg anymore , _who am I, who am I, who am I , I passed through the mirror , I am nothing but fear. Do I remember something else? Do I remember anything? Armand, my love, eshgham, please come back to bed, it is too early too rise, no one is waiting for you, you have no duty here but to stay here with me, on that pillow, and let me kiss you until the sun sets again, yes that’s an order from your prince – the one right here, and I’m sure the one across the ocean would agree. Do not neglect your love, that is your mission, ghalbam._

_Come here and hold me, I can feel the wind creeping in , this clement spring will soon end , here comes the summer of steel._

* * *

Ufizi reached to pick the knife again, but didn’t really know what to do with it.

There are only so many places you can cut a person’s flesh, and through observation he knew that repetition does not mean the augmentation of the level of pain.

The human body is strange like that, any pain is pain, perceived on the same level, and soon forgotten through the action of a stubborn instinct of survival. If we could remember pain as something else than the vague bubble of speech saying “ _I was in pain once, I know it, and do not wish to feel it again”_ – we wouldn’t be able to live, too preoccupied by the strident memory of every broken bone, of every toothache, of every day stuck in bed , and those thousand hours of sore limbs.

Let’s thank our forgetfulness, ripping fresh memories out of our nerves to give us those senseless shudders and gut feelings instead of the stark blade of recollection.

Knowing this from prior experience, Ufizi figured that pain wasn’t the issue, but memory – pain as an element didn’t matter, since you could forget or get used to pain.

What he had to do was attack something that the instinct of forgetfulness couldn’t erase, something that hurt not the body but the core of what made the self. Something that if it was attacked could not be fixed by the clever work of regeneration the human body weaves when cut, burned, broken or bruised.

Unfeeling, void of pain, or fear, or even the vague half-shudder of forgotten injuries, Ufizi pondered on what would be enough to destroy him without needing pain, if someone were to take a knife to his skin.

The long white scars on his wrists were proof of failed attempts to generate the fear of dying, his bleeding heart pumping heretically, giving out more blood to waste but never a feeling, not ever, not anymore, not even to save its own life. Unfeeling, void of pain, he had patched up his wrists every time –medically precise in his indifference.

He was a tool to be used, he was needed, he couldn’t allow himself to damage the difficulty replaceable machine that he was. Unfeeling, heartless, his only value was that of his obedience. If he gave up to the nothingness, he was useless- and he had too much to do to allow himself to be useless. What would break him, really, pain aside, was for the knife to make him useless – without killing him.

He had pondered on which limb would be the worst to lose, what would make Weber drag him away to be slaughtered like an old horse unable to pull the heavy loaded cart of its master, too tired to fight the yoke, aimlessly struggling under the weight of it’s burden.

He had settled on the eyes.

Without a hand he could still give orders, without legs he could still be carried on deck. Without eyes to judge the rising of the tides, the tightness of the sails, to decipher the next move an enemy ship? Utterly useless. If he were to lose his eyes, Weber would not even have to snap his fingers to order his death, Ufizi would bring the knife to his wrists himself and not let indifference stop him this time.

He figured even without that dread of uselessness, losing one’s eyes was never a fun prospect.

Unfeeling, heartless, void of pain and thus void of empathy. That was why Weber had deemed it fit to put him in charge of the prisoner’s interrogation. It was not his usual duty, it was not why he had followed Weber in the first place – but that was when he had a heart, now he was a tool, he had nothing to say.

So heartless was supposed to mean careless, was supposed to mean he had to stand in this man’s cell, over this brown skin tightened around the ribs, and over the long black hair – obscenely displayed- hiding the face, hiding the blood dripping of the face, and that because he couldn’t feel anything meant he could do anything.

That wasn’t right. Not that it didn’t _feel_ right, it felt like nothing at all, but it wasn’t right. Ufizi could not pick up the knife and carry it to the man’s closed eyelids and pierce the thin skin. He could see himself do it in his mind’s eye and it felt like nothing, but he could not _do_ it.

* * *

When Weber asks him what he did in this damp and dark cell, he does so with a smile Ufizi knows should send a shiver down his spine and have him run the hell out of the room.

When he answers, he knows his own words should make him vomit all he has in his stomach and then the rest of his guts, should make him cry and beg to all heavens for the forgiveness he doesn’t deserve. He makes his report, he doesn’t give details, only what Weber excepts: facts, and a neutral tone. Weber has no time for Ufizi’s shattered conscience and his bleeding heart.

When he goes back to his bunk that night, all he can see his the metal of his knife tearing the soft flesh of the man’s cheeks, he forces himself to attach his own hand to the image of the knife in his mind, and all he can hear is a word screamed and then whispered: _Mahrokh_.


	7. Understandings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a new character appears, because all the other ones weren't enough. Ufizi gets a break, and isn't that nice?
> 
> (tw : mention of suicide )

The first few days after the surgery, Joseph leaves Ufizi alone.

Not _alone_ , alone, he watches him from afar and checks on him every other hour, but he walks on tiptoes in the corridors, and put his ear to the wall to listen for noises from his room instead of knocking on the door and ask outright if he’s still alive. He doesn’t think that Ufizi would kill himself, not really, the man seems to be too polite to do so as a guest in a house, but the surgeon had been adamant.

And Joseph had a habit of trusting doctors, especially naval surgeons – it seemed to him they knew the human soul and its complexities much more acutely for having been stuck on a few wood planks in the middle of the ocean with a handful of other men for months on hand. So the doctor, using words one could not ignore and a chilling stare had asked him to watch Ufizi , and to watch him closely, so he would do so. He figured Ufizi understood his steadfast watching pretty quickly and decided to help him out by leaving his room more often.

He walks slowly and painfully , his whole left side clenched and tense, refusing both the movement and the foreign object stuck in his chest cavity. After a few days, Ufizi discovers that being more than a room away from his bedroom is a bad idea – Joseph is always watching, ready to balance him with an arm if he falters, but if he falls to the ground, the mechanic isn’t strong enough to lift him up on his own. He has to call for a servant to help him carry him back to his room.

Joseph can tell Ufizi hates every second he’s dependant on his smaller frame, every time he gets caught up by vertigo and has to grip Joseph’s shoulder, he can tell that the daily half-hour spend winding up and oiling his clock-work heart is pure agony for the man, who spends it grinding his teeth and looking everywhere but at Joseph and his handiwork.

He tries to be delicate, and silent, invisible. He tries to unobtrusive, to pointedly ignore the fact that he is a witness to every moments Ufizi feels something again – from the comfort of a sip of cold water, to the simple success when he steadily walks unassisted to the patio for the first time.

Every time a frown or a grimace forms on Ufizi’s face, he is there to see the way the man suddenly becomes emotionless again – as if he realized the loss of control and waited for an invisible enemy to stick their sword in the exposed spot. He sees when Ufizi freezes in the middle of a movement, remembering something, and feeling the emotion connected to the memory for the first time, and he is there to see him retreat into his mind like a hurt fox – going to lie in its den to die.

Joseph knows what it’s like to be fighting against one’s own brain, it’s an all too familiar presence in his life, the too-loud thoughts and the incomprehensible bursts of feelings.

He tries to leave Ufizi alone, he really does – he knows the man lived through things he cannot imagine, a life of horror, of violence, fifteen years with his heart barely attached to his chest, fighting against the very meaning of a fairy’s magic!

He cannot understand it, but the moment he sits at his work bench to lean on the mechanism of a automaton, a commission to some lady who wants one of his famous singing and leaping bird , all he can see is the dark red hollow spot of Ufizi’s chest, and the fragile pound of copper he carefully put inside. As he tighten the cogs of the delicate bird, his hands recall the tremors than ran through them when he screwed the tiniest gold screws in the sides of the heart – his hands never shook , even as a kid, his hands have always been as steady as an anvil and as light as a feather.

That day they had felt like pure lead, tightening each minuscule part together, touching the springs to make sure they had room to move, the sweet and tangy breath of the fairies right at his shoulder, making sure Ufizi was asleep , and the surgeon cleaning his knives- his own work was done, all relied on Joseph’s shaking hands and craftmanship. Joseph had never been so terrified and so certain, just as he is certain now that with a twist of the key the little silver bird will leap off his hand and sing the Papageno Duetto. He knew the heart would work, he had designed it, and he is a genius after all – he doesn’t say it out loud but he knows it well enough to be confident.

He is simply terrified of what comes after the cogs are running and the bird is softly tweeting with its tiny metal voice. It doesn’t matter how beautifully it sings if no one wants it. If the lady turns up her nose at the construction and scorns the hours of meticulous work. It doesn’t matter if Ufizi’s new heart ticks and pumps and winds up with the most perfect clicks if the man attached to the heart looks at the sea from the patio and someday decides to walk up to it to drown himself , the pound of copper in his chest dragging him swiftly to the ocean floor.

Despite his best efforts, Joseph does not, in fact, leave Ufizi alone.

When the man is laying back in the patio in the sun, his tan slowly coming back to his strong arms and his sunken cheeks, Joseph sits next to him. Ufizi lets him, which is a small victory (even though, again, the Italian is stubbornly polite) and he doesn’t make to leave either.

So, Joseph starts talking.

He talks of anything really, what he’s working on, a book he read, a memory. He does so because he often wished for something like that when his brain was screaming at him, to have someone talk endlessly next to him to submerge his thoughts. He’s shy at first, Ufizi never initiates a conversation, and scarcely replies.

He feels stupid rambling, sitting there, a straw hat on his head because his skin doesn’t agree with the sun, while Ufizi is lying there, all his limbs relaxed but his eyes intently focused on the sea. To Joseph he looks like those sculptures they excavated out of ancient tombs near Rome, men and women images lying on their sides, the sculptor having tried to show how they were when alive but only managing to capture the shiver of death. So, Joseph talks, and looking at his hands, he catches a glimpse of gold on his fingers, the light reflecting off Ufizi’s heart.

“When I was kid, my father house had a big garden. Part of it I was not allowed to go to, it was kept proper and tame for the parties – flowers and bushes arranged with perfect symmetry. Behind the gardener’s shed though, there was a wild patch, where the grass was lush and full of dandelions in the spring. I would go hide there for hours, not even doing anything, lying on the ground and feeling myself fill up with sunrays.”

He pauses for a moment, closes his eyes to revel in the dark red of his eyelids.

“I would…put my fingers up to my closed eyes. The index close to the temple, the middle one at in the crease under the eye. And I would move them slowly, deliberately, over my eyelid, to make colours appear. The first one is always dark red, but as you move your fingers, thinning the membrane of the eyelid, you get to see blues and greens, so vibrant, made of pure light.

I have still to see a duchess’s dress have such a true blue as the one I saw in my eyes as a kid. The yellows and oranges too. So deep, like deflagrations in a stormy night sky. The purple of the rarest kind. The only time something came close to these colours was during the tulip fad. Those tulips, crossbred to infinity to get the purest and most expensive colours – I would walk in the gardens and marvel at the petals. The counts and dukes walking next to me saw only the gold of coins they would buy them for, but I drank up the colours. Like the sunrays in that dandelions infested garden” 

He stays silent for a while, enjoying the sounds of the waves crashing on the rocky beach, and the admiring the blinding orange inside his eyelids. When he opens his eyes again, it’s to see Ufizi with his head turned toward the little patch of grass near the front door, covered in sprouting dandelions.

Another time he says:

“My father was a clockmaker as well, and I hated it. No kid wants their dad to stay for hours in a workshop, poking at tiny pieces of metal with tinier tools they aren’t allowed to touch under any circumstances”

Joseph has a smile in his voice when he formed the words, a deep fondness that contrasted with the retelling of his younger self anguish.

“I remember, I only broke something in this workshop once – It wasn’t even something my dad had built, it was something his apprentice was working on, and I had figured out that clock would never tick correctly. I think that’s why I dropped it, it was a mercy to let it shatter. I just wanted the attention, and I thought, well maybe they’ll thank me when they try to fix it and realize it was built backward and hopeless anyway. That didn’t happen, kids plans never work out – I was grounded by my father and the apprentice found me some time later and gave me the first real punches of my life."

"Turned out great for me though – my mother had him sacked and I took his place in the workshop, I guess my father took pity on my black eye and broken nose. Funny how things change faces so quickly. I hated clockmaking and it’s what brought me closer to my father. I think I never shared two sentences with him that didn’t have the word “cog” or “spring” in it. He was a very focused man. Could work for days on end, simply fixing the same things in the same mechanisms he had seen in his magnifying glass for years. He never took the newest French or English watches – Holland made! That’s it!"

"I never had the bravery to do that, to find one and only one thing to do. I need the constant challenge, the constant awe. That’s why I build automatons. Once I’m done creating them, I get to build them, and then I can marvel in seeing them working. Once you build a bird or a puppet that can write its name, a simple pocket watch, even one that tells the phases of the moon is an awful bore.”

Ufizi’s gravelly voice echoes strangely in the slowly awakening twilight: “My heart was a fun challenge, then; was it?”

If Joseph Merlin had been a man shaped by his times and fit for polite society, he would have denied this, would have damned the very thought- if he had been a coward, he would have blushed and sputtered an apology, crumbling of shame under Ufizi’s piercing gaze. Joseph Merlin is neither and thus answers with a wide smile:

“Yes, it absolutely was! The most fascinating thing I’ve worked on in years! I was so out of depth! Mixing surgery, clockmaking and faerie magic, of all things? Incredible, purely incredible!”

Ufizi smiles at that – and Joseph sees , focused as he is on the man, that it is a genuine, instinctive smile. But what makes him feel warm and lightheaded is that Ufizi freezes and sets his features in place only for a split second, before letting himself smile longer, one of his controlled smiles, that rolls on his lips with practiced ease.


	8. Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which i keep insisting there are other characters that Giordano Ufizi in this book , but the readers are less and less convinced. Also, Ufizi yells at a god.

Joseph doesn’t know why he wakes -there is no sound expect from the steady to and fro of the sea, constant as the cicada singing their summer loving. No noise in the house, no sudden change of temperature, he’s simply and suddenly awake, no tiredness in his bones, awake and alert as if, laying in bed, he was being lured in a false sense of security by the sea and the cicadas all saying “Sleep, sleep, sleep, child, it is of no importance, sleep, sleep, sleep”.

He sits upright on his bed, listening more intently, past the sounds, and hears nothing. Anguish is gnawing at his guts, and it’s not a night terror or the panic strikes that choke him in the sunlight-bathed crowd when the world gets too loud. It’s the sudden fear that something is happening in silence that shouldn’t happen.

He gets out of bed swiftly, not bothering to put on a dressing gown, he’s pressed by the silence banging against his ears, he opens his bedroom door to find the moon rays bathing the floorboards in cold light, reverberating against the faces of the clocks in the hallway – none of them ticking, because he saw how the hydra-headed ticking from the myriad of clocks grated and irritated Ufizi, used to the passing of time marked by whistles and bells, and thus stopped winding them up. No ticking sound, putting him out of time and clear mechanical order.

The reason why he can see the moon shining it’s light on the floorboards is because the door of Ufizi’s room is wide open, and inside it the shutters are open too, letting all the night come in, and the bed is undone. He walks inside slowly, like one approach the darkness of a cave where one thinks they might have seen movement and the twin light of shining eyes. Ufizi is not in the room, there is no light except for the moon, but on the desk, a single candlestick covered in wax, the candle entirely wasted away. Joseph walks up to the window, his feet move under him like in a dream – like he knows what he’s doing, mind and body agreeing like they never do in real life. He strains his eyes against the full moon rays and sees the wide canvas of the sky, sea and sand , all painted in stroke of blue and sliver, and in the middle, like a stain or the final touch completing the masterpiece , the dark form of a man, breaking the layered harmony of the sky, sea and sand, standing with his feet in the water.

Joseph stumbles, almost falls on the sand but reaches Ufizi fast enough -in his mind , not fast enough, even tough the man is standing still, absolutely still under the stars. The mechanic crashes against his back and encircles him in his arms, as he does so a wave crashes against their shins – they are alone at the junction between sky, sea and sand and Joseph’s right hand is flat over Ufizi’s heart.

“Don’t do it. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever’s going on in that heart of yours, whatever you’re feeling, please don’t. The ocean doesn’t deserve you, you don’t get to walk right up to it like that.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Ufizi’s voice comes as soft as the rocks being moved with the waves under their feet, and Joseph catches it solely because his ears is pressed to his back, where it resonates like a thunderstorm.

“You’re walking to your death, because that’s what you’ve been doing all your life, and,I know you can’t help it, but please don’t” Joseph tightens his hold on him, pressing ever closer. Both of Ufizi’s cold hands come to rest on the one above his heart, cold from the fresh air, against Joseph’s red-hot panic.

“I wasn’t ,I won’t, my life isn’t my own anymore, I can’t take it. It would be unfair.”

“Unfair to who?”

“To Ivan. To my heart. To you.”

“You owe me nothing. I want you to live for you. I build you a heart. For you. Don’t carry it like a debt.”

“I don’t know how to do that. I’m trying. Don’t worry.” He clenches his hand tighter at that, and Joseph realizes that somehow, Ufizi is leaning into his chest and that he is the one holding him uptight now. The thought isn’t as alarming as it should have been, it is a weight he is willing bear for a while.

“I won’t take a life. Not mine, not someone else’s. Not anymore, not ever. I came down here to say it to someone. The sea was there. I won’t kill again. I’ve killed with blood in my eyes to save my life, I’ve killed on orders, I’ve killed mindlessly, now I live with the memory of every life I took. It’s too much death, the bodies thrown in the sea. Ivan died for me, so I could live, he might just has well have died by my sword. Behind my eyes there is his face, and I’m the only one to have seen him in every way of life and death, if I die he’s gone. I won’t kill anymore Joseph, not ever. Not even myself. I don’t have the right.”

“I’m glad, I’m glad, thank God “ Joseph exhales in his back, a sob mixed with a smile “Thank the sea for being there, listening.”

“Doesn’t it frighten you?” Ufizi says, looking at their intertwined hands, warming the copper plate of his heart.

“What?”

“Me, the life I led, what I just said, all of it.”

Joseph sighs against his back, leaning on him, swaying a bit on his feet as if angling them to start a waltz.

“You could frighten me. You have the capacity. But I’ve never seen you do the things you talk about. I can try to imagine it but it doesn’t add up with how I know you. As a man slowly dying of a decaying heart being somehow dropped on my doorstep – and then one carrying my biggest masterpiece wherever he goes.”

He pauses, closing his eyes for a second, and Ufizi feels his eyelashes brushing his skin.

“What frightens me is you getting salt water all over it. It’s a delicate piece of machinery, you know.You can’t put it through hell and back and expect it to be okay. You could scratch the plate, or disrupt the mechanism, it may jam. And then where would we be?”

The sound of the waves and the cicadas, the dawn rising with a surprising silence -even if Joseph always thought the sun had a sort of humming quality.

“Living, Giordano, is so much more than not dying. I need you to take care of your life like I take care of your heart. I’m not afraid of you, I’m afraid _for_ you – why else do you think I ran like a madman to catch you, in the middle of the night?” Their hold on each other is softer now; still swaying, realizing the dawn will soon see them, and not knowing if they should care, and Ufizi thinks : _why else indeed?_

* * *

The grotesquely loud voice of the Hungry God shattered the air:

“ **YOU. WERE. BORN. ALONE. AND. YOU. WILL. DIE. ALONE. THAT’S. WHAT. HUMANS. DO”**

“Well, _screw you!_ ” Ufizi yelled against the storm “Maybe that’s what Gods think – maybe that’s what happens to you – you appear one day and you vanish the other, maybe you’re all alone, all the time, forever, but not us! I won’t let you say that!

"I wasn’t born alone, the screams of my mother are there to prove it, somewhere lost in time , I didn’t live alone, not a second, every step that I took I took upon dirt already stepped on , upon waters already sailed, and when I ventured in the unknown , I was holding someone’s hand! And I hurt! And I killed! I cried and then I cried no more! I was trapped in my heart and I killed some more! I loved! I lost! I learned to cry again – and to sing! "

"And it doesn’t matter! None of it matter because I won’t die alone! Not now and not ever! Not ever, because someday I will die with the name of my love on my lips, and it will like I said it against his skin! And not now, not now because if you strike down now, with your ugly claws and your ridiculous strength, if you strike me now, I won’t die alone! I will die next to this man! How stupid is that?"

"Next to this man who should know better than to stand next to me, who hasn’t forgiven me, and how could he? And he killed the lips of my love and his warm skin, and I can’t forgive that either but he’s _here._ He’s here and I won’t kill any more, nevermore, I’m human and you can kill me but this man will be next to me and all that happen afterward will be the real truth about humanity that you _somehow_ didn’t learn after all this time : someone will _die_ and someone will hold the dying’s hand for a bit and then someone will _stay_ in the earth and another _walk away_! That’s it! That’s all there **is**!” 

Ufizi yelled at the storm, and tears mixed with the rain that mixed with the salt of the sea and Meher couldn’t discern the sky from the blue of Ufizi’s eyes and the ground from the black feathers of the God – but he didn’t need to, somehow his grip on Ufizi hadn’t faltered.

“So why don’t **YOU**. Why don’t **YOU** find a hand to **HOLD**? Find someone to lay down with and **DIE** a little?”


	9. Hopes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> remember the surgeon and the half-drowned dude way back in chapter 2 ? they back

The surgeon had tried to explain to Alan that their situation was very dire – they were in uncharted waters, far from the usual merchants roads, stranded on a tiny barren island, he could easily count the trees growing on it and the number barely went over thirty – the topography made him doubt there might be a spring of drinkable water , and food was most certainly scarce. Not enough good signs to make him have high hopes in their survival. He tried saying those points to the giant standing next to him on the beach , hands on his hips, but he had only shook his head, his long blond hair made dry by the sea salt making a faint scratchy noise, and he had smiled. He felt like this smile was dismissing him and his practical observations and stopped talking at once, vexed. He guessed that the man couldn’t care less about odds of survival – he had indeed been fished out of the sea once before , luck was on his side in an almost ridiculous way.

“Come now, Doctor, we should find some shade to sit under – the sun is hitting both our heads, and tiring us.”

Huang noticed the constant plural used throughout that sentence , and could not help to hear it as a tactful way to tell him that he was spouting nonsense. Alan smiled at him again and began to walk toward the trees. Huang followed him slowly, his eyes trailing along the beach , watching the waves for signs of any planks, bits of ropes or sails that could inform them on the fate of the Devil’s Smile. When he reached the shade, Alan had already laid down on the mix of sand, strands of grass and fallen palm tree leaves that composed the ground, his drenched shirt discarded on a tiny dry bush next to him. Huang sat next to him, his back as straight as he could despite his sore muscles , and started to take off his neck tie and vest with slow movements.

“You can’t possibly think we have any chances to get out alive of this situation – look at this place.”

Alan raised his head a few inches to look at the trees, beach, and the sour faced man next to him

“I’ve seen worse “ he said with a smile again, and dropped his head down.

“I’m sure you have – but I’m not optimistic.’

‘You don’t have to be, doctor, but you need to have some hope at least. The worst fever can heal in the night, can it not?”

The surgeon sighed as he peeled off his wet shirt of his skin, shivering.

“The human body is a complex mechanic with millions of invisible agents inside of it working for its protection – a fever doesn’t leave by itself; it is fought against. I don’t think anything is working to help this miserable island.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Alan said, stretching his arms and torso like a big cat. Huang looked the muscles moved under his skin and tried not to imagine them shrinking and the skin sagging on the ribs like it ultimately would as they both made their way to starvation.

“We’re here now, we’ll be its invisible helpers.”

 _We can’t even help ourselves_ , Huang thought as he hugged his knees, trying to stop the shivers running down his spine.

The sea was calm in front of them, giving lazy licks to the white sand, bearing the serenity of hypocrites. Not a few hours ago, it had raged and screamed, closing its jaws around the Devil’s Smile, engulfing the ship, the waves touching the heavy skies. The wind had lashed the sides of the sea with a fury- the wind’s spirits intentions were surely to push it back and protect the ship, but like children convinced what they are always right through the lense of their yet short experience of life , they had only helped to make the ship heave and tumble on the agitated sea.

The screams of the winds and the captain’s shouts barely piercing through them were still trapped in Huang’s ears – he had stepped on deck for but an instant ; Diego had fetched him, a man’s had been hit by a pulley , he was laying on the deck bleeding, all hands were busy, Diego needed the doctor to carry him – all those things said with the wide brown eyes raised toward him, the child’s small arms trembling uncontrollably, and once more Huang thought that this was no place for someone so young.

So he stood on the wave whipped deck only for a few instants, the time to look through the heavy curtain of rain if the injury had been fatal on impact or not , and then to drag the unconscious body to the latch. A ray of lighting struck so close Huang felt it in his bones, the explosion of thunder nearly simultaneous. He did not really know what his mistake was. He was holding tight to the door opening – with one hand only though, the other was under the wounded sailor’s shoulder. His feet were firmly planted on the planks – he was not one of those surgeons who never gain their sea legs , he had spent enough times on boats to know how to walk, how to stand on a ship or rowboat, in calm seas or raging storms.

Maybe his mistake was being too careful, and looking sharply up to the mast- scared that the lighting might have struck it and that it would fall on their three huddled forms before they had the time to retreat under deck. The sharp movement of his head, looking in the rain-streaked darkness made him loose some of his precious balance, his feet moved under him and in an effort to catch himself his grip on the sailor had faltered. A wave hit the ship’s flank full force right at this instant, and before he knew it, he was surrounded by water, and dragged overboard with the swift retreating movement of the wave. He remembered thinking for a panicked second that it simply felt like flying, only wetter. As if he had any idea what flying felt like. Then as he crashed through the sea every thought left him as air was knocked out his lungs. He passed out instantly, or at least fast enough that he didn’t get to see Alan recklessly jumping overboard to catch him. The man was truly a mystery. From his death to water, he hadn’t gained an ounce of renewed fear and respect toward the sea : he had instead declared himself immune to the Ocean’s fancies and continued to mock the sea attempts to bring him back to her arms. Once again, she had failed. It was in Alan’s arms that Huang had awoken, floating adrift on a now serene sea. The sailor had been breathing deeply and steadily, slowing moving his feet to steer them in a seemingly random direction, keeping him balanced on his chest with a strong arm.

He felt a little bad for snapping at him about their meagre chances of survival when the man had just saved his life, risking his new supernatural luck to drag him back to the surface. But the fact remained : if the ship and his inhabitants hadn’t perished in the storm, there was no way they were turning back to look for them. They might have, under other circumstances, but the Captain had rushed toward the storm and he would rush past it. Alan and him were truly stranded , and he didn’t like to think of this barren little piece of dirt has the final step of his travels, but he had to be realistic. His notebooks were still in this trunk by his cot in the ship, all his papers, his notes, his recollections of all the places he’s been from the Far East point of China, to the inlands of Europe, and then on all the stops along his way on the seas, all he had seen, all the stories he had collected – stacked in his trunk, in a indecipherable language , on a ship heading to it’s doom. He sighed – maybe some of his carefully written copies had reached home in all these years. He had no way of knowing, but there was some hope in that. He imagined his father and sisters receiving the worn-down parcels and opening the thick sheets of foreign paper, reading his words with awe and pride. It was a nice thought and he mused on it for a while, before carefully putting it on the back of his mind. He would need it for the days to come, but he couldn’t start seeking comfort from it so soon. 

Alan must have noticed his faraway look , because when Huang shook his head a little and turned his way, the blond was looking at him, an unreadable expression on his face. He raised slowly and looked at the sea where Huang’s gaze had been fixated seconds ago.

“Don’t let her bring you down, doctor. She bites but doesn’t mean it.”

He got up and stretched his arms above his head ,and shouted:

“You can’t keep me, Madam Sea! I’ll escape again and again ; those are my words!”

Then turning to get his shirt and putting it on with one swift motion, he said to Huang : 

“Here’s for the words, now for the actions. Let’s look for water.”

Putting on his shirt but leaving his soaked vest where it was, Huang followed him.

* * *

On the third day, against all odds, it started raining. Alan had made a quick thing of building a contraption with every piece of clothing they had to catch the droplets of water and made a makeshift gullet down to the floor of the cave they had found and made their home. The rocky ground of the cave was carved in a system of shallow pools which soon overflowed from the rainwater, and would last them for a few days. Huang felt like his body was breathing again, lying down on the ground and letting the rain cover him with its kisses. When the rain stopped, the wind suddenly picked up and Alan’s everlasting smile faltered a bit, a frown pushing it downward. Wind picking up so soon after a rain shower was bad news , it could only announce a bigger storm.

They could not start a fire, had no flint and now certainly no piece of wood on the island was left dry. They could just sit near one another, wait for whatever was to come, and let it pass. 

“- I have fight in me, do you understand? It’s just how I am, and my father and grandfather before me. We were born in a city surrounded by walls, and then with the tide by the walls of the sea. We are the only city with canons pointed both inlands and towards the sea. We cannot trust either side, we are on our own, and what we do is fish, or fight, and those are ridiculously similar. I’d never thought I’d end up on a pirate ship, mind you. Every captain that has half a brain knows to trust a Malouin with sails and ropes, with timber and hulls. And when time comes, with a sword and gun. It’s in our blood. But I’m not from a privateer family myself. And that Captain, Meher, he’s no pirate by choice either. I feel like no one on this damn ship has any of the others figured out , because none of us are what they seem. Some more than others, I know, I will not say everyone on those red-tinted planks carries with themselves the same darkness that the Captain drags on his heels and that his man Armand keeps dim enough to not engulf all of us. No, but still. Even the youngest boy – Diego – I would watch him and think “ _here’s one who doesn’t know what’s he’s after_ ” ,and if I’m honest that’s rare on the sea. You’re after your payday or the next time you see land or your true love’s soft lips , that’s what it’s all about, otherwise we wouldn’t bother sing about it. No reason to go to sea but the need of money or the need for space that you will soon regret. Which brings me back to you, doctor, because you do know what you’re after, that much I know, but it’s not the coins and it’s not the big breath of marine air- you’ve been everywhere, it’s not even the travels and change of scenery. You just keep on going, and every time Meher said “ _further West_ ” , you wouldn’t even grace the deck with your presence for a second longer with us bewildered folks. You simply accepted it and went back to your reading. I don’t mean to assume, but if you had a true love to come back to, every mile further West would tear your heart apart and make you mad with love and pain. I don’t know you, I don’t understand you and if you are correct then we will die here before I cracked that puzzle , but I mean to say. I mean to say, I’m glad I got to hear the set up to your riddle, at the very least.”

Huang huddled close to Alan during the whole diatribe, leaning closer, trying to guess the parts of the monologue he couldn’t hear, swallowed by the crack of the thunder and the roaring of the wind running wildly in the open mouth of the cave. Part of it he didn’t hear, and part of it of he didn’t understood – the rushed tone of fear making Alan’s accent thick and his voice foreign to Huang’s ears. He didn’t understand until halfway through that the speech was indeed addressed to him, albeit in a strange and convoluted way . He thought back on his search of the unknown, and the idea that he was someone’s unexplainable phenomena was suddenly very amusing to him. His scientific mind had failed to include himself as a parameter. Years of looking for the unkown part of the world and all along he was his own mystery. It sounded so simple and so utterly cliché that a laugh escaped from his lips, but he was startled out of it by a flash of lightening. It’s light illuminated the cave, and for a split second Alan’s face appeared – his eyes shadowed by his broad forehead were pools of darkness, and the planes of his bearded cheeks where soaked with tears.

“If I’m wrong and we get through this I – “ he started, and somehow words didn’t seem to get out. The thunder outside roared, the unceasing anger of the sky - and the sea answering right back made his voice feel tiny and weak. He was never one to shout, but it felt like right now, even a whisper was too loud. This was not a time for human speech. But Alan needed his words, so he continued : “If we get through this, I promise to give you some clues – to my riddle. You’ll have the time to think it over. Turn it around. Discover everything. I promise.”


	10. Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Variations on how to end a good thing

Armand, To _eshgham_ , 10th of February, _Heather Cliff_

_We fell in love too fast and we had too short a time together in the way we were when we first fell in each other’s arms. Everything changed so fast, sometimes I close my eyes and think myself back into the marble palace and the secret gardens. You asked nothing of me but my company, and that I didn’t understand. You would take my hand and play with my fingers. You would put your rings on them and laugh when they barely fit, the gold and ivory sitting strangely on my bony white hands, the pale on the paler, they were a king’s riches on a ghost’s hands._

_You’d kiss me then and ask me to tell you another story about my home country. I could barely talk about my country in the way you would have wanted, in the way I think would have interested you, it wasn’t the philosophical musings of one noticing the strange differences and striking resemblances in the way men live on parallel sides of the sea, no, I mostly told you stories of my little home town. It was the baking my mother did, the extra pastries put to bake in the corners of the immense oven while the week’s worth bread was rising in it – it was the pear tree in the garden, me defending it against every kid in the neighbourhood so I could triumphantly bring the first ripe one to my sister, it was the cows licking my hands through the wood enclosure. Playful, you’d give my fingers a lick as well and I would laugh and talk no more._

_You did listen though, to every word. Sometimes you’d ask me to continue the story days later or you’d give something you had ordered to be brought from the furthest corner of your kingdom, and say “does this come close? Is this like you told me?”. Tiny fragments of memories given shape in a chimeric way, transformed by your presence. I’d barely knew what to say and every time, I’d feel like crying. You’d tell me stories too, of the kings of old, of the Gods walking the earth among us and the best way to honour their presence. Of the builders of temples and cities, the explorers and the inventors._ _You would take me to look at the night sky and decipher it for me in ways I could never have imagined, reading from an ages old parchment._

_One time during such a night I remember pointing at the Big Dipper, telling you that in France we would call it either this or the “Big Bear”. You nodded and went on a tangent about the stars composing it. I do not remember the names you gave them, at the time I was barely learning your language but I recall the explanation. One bright star, shining with so much light, so constant, that every civilization that looked at the night sky placed it front and centre of a bigger group, building animals and kitchen equipment around it. An unfailing guide. And right next to it, easily missed and going its way across the sky unnoticed, a less shiny one. Its name meaning “neglected”. You told me, still staring at the sky, you read somewhere that the star seems to fade away so much, in some faraway land they say you can stop seeing it, and that means you will die before the year ends. So,most people avoid looking at it, in case it isn’t there anymore. A bad omen of a star, so close to the most blinding one. It didn’t feel like such an apt metaphor at the time, but maybe I was more focused on watching your profile than listening to the irony hidden between your words. You said you could see the stars in your cell, through a tiny opening high on the wall. You told me this in your delirium, I never dared to ask what you were looking for exactly. Were you looking at the Guiding star of the Ursa Major, trying to figure out your way home? Or were your eyes searching for the Forgotten star? Looking for hope in it’s constant ,even if faint, presence? Or were you trying to find consolation in the chance of your augured death? Did you even remember this tangent you went on this fine day underneath the stars? You were also holding my hand then and I do know how the evening ended. Your head was always more filled with memories of your conquests than of faraway stars. I am but your companion star, faded and fading more._

* * *

\- Where are you going, son?

\- Well, I’m on this ship, I go with it, I don’t think I’m going anywhere else.

\- You always answer like a man giving wrong directions to a traveller for the laugh of it

\- I wouldn’t know about that, captain, sir, back where I came from, they say I don’t have a lot of words

\- But you have no lack of mind, son. Where are you going? I ask because you never leave. Kids your age, their parents who put them on boats to have them earn some extra penny, the kids do one or two crossings and either realize they could be more useful on land working some other job, or they scatter in some odd port to escape going back. I’ve seen it happen countless times, I’ve had to hire many new hands because of kids running away.

\- And you think because I’m not running from the ship means I’m going somewhere else?

-That’s what I think, yes.

\- And that makes me special?

\- It makes you something else.

\- I don’t know where I’m going, sir. I think I’m trying to understand something that I don’t quite get, and the place to do that is right here on those planks. We could head west or east, north or south, or down below if the fancy took you, captain, it wouldn’t change a thing for me.

\- See, Diego? You’re just trying to confuse me on purpose.

\- With all due respects, captain, I’m confusing myself even more. I told you, I’m not one for putting things into words. That was my brother’s gift.

\- Your brother? He stayed back there on your island?

\- No, sir. He’s somewhere out there on the sea, I mean I hope he is.

\- Ah! So you’re looking for him.

\- Not really. (A shrug and a sudden movement of the mop) By that I mean, I’m not trying that hard. If he wanted to be found, I would know it. He left a couple of years before I did, left me with my mom, wrote a few times to say he wasn’t lost or drowned. He sent me a sketch of a cliff with seals on it once. If he had sent more, I would have known then, that he wanted to be found. But he never did. He sent some shells, feathers, and some foreign coins too. The letters got sparce , and we couldn’t really answer to urge him to write more – he never gave us the names of the ships he was on, and you know how sea-mailing is, sir, it’s a relay race. No point in asking who the ship bringing the bag of letters who they got them from, they are from all over the place. We could just be happy the letters reached us at all, smelling of rot and brine.

\- So you left when he stopped writing?

\- Oh no, long after that. I took my time. To think, I guess. Make up my mind. It was my brother’s thing as well, the thinking. Oh, he did it quicker, with him a thought hadn’t ended he had already skipped to the next. He’d grind his teeth at night, his thoughts rolling around in his head, I had a maraca instead of a brother. (A long silence as he wrenches the mop over the bucket.) No, sir, I left along after that. When I finally made up my mind, I packed my bag and told my mom I had to go down to the sea. She didn’t look at me go, but she had baked a loaf of bread and put it wrapped in a towel by the door. She used to do that for my dad when he went fishing. She would say _“Bread, fruit of the earth, to accompany you on the water, salted sterile land”_. I don’t think my dad understood, but he always took it with him. I always figured it was a sort of spell, from the land my mother came from. So I took the bread and let my mother’s spells carry me to the sea.

\- That was unfair to you.

\- What was?

\- That she didn’t look at you. That you didn’t get to say goodbye.

\- You must understand, sir, she lost all three of us to the sea. My dad, my brother and me. She crossed the sea , landed on an island, made a life, and the sea took it all back.

\- You didn’t die, Diego. Nor did your brother. Your mother lost you the moment she didn’t tell you goodbye nor embraced you like one does a son starting a long journey.

\- I don’t know, sir-

\- Man cannot live on bread alone – here is another old spell, one I learned from Armand. She fed you her magic of resentment and refused you the warm arms of a farewell.

* * *

\- Let him go ! Meher it’s too late, he’s gone! We’re under fire, we need to move and go back to the main fleet!

Meher screamed like a hurt wolf, wiping his face with an hand covered in blood.

\- I’m not done with him!

\- He swam to Weber’s ship ! The flagship ! If we follow, we will blown to pieces, Meher, come on, the Devil’s Smile will not withstand another canon salvo, you know that!

\- What do I know? What do _you_ know?! Who is the master of this ship ? Who was taught to manoeuvre entire fleets and lead them to battle ? Who was brought up to be a king?

Meher had finally torn his attention from escaping shape of Ufizi, a dot in the turbulent sea growing dimmer with each stroke. The fury in his eyes was now focused entirely on Armand, who stepped slowly away from the railing to put some distance between them.

-You are, Meher, you were, but on this ship I’m your second in command-

A barking laugh, one that brings no memory of secret gardens and fading stars to Armand’s mind.

\- Oh , on this ship. To whom to I owe the pleasure of commanding this ship in the first place? Tell me again Armand, who brought me to this rotting hull and bargained my life to piracy?

\- I saved your life, Meher. It was the only way and you know it.

\- What a way to be saved. And I should be grateful?

\- Like any thing that’s alive is grateful to be for one day more, one day after the other

\- Call me dead then, because the last thing I’ll do is give thank for my existence- not to the universe, and not to you.

\- How can you talk like this? Would you rather be in a cell right now? At the hands of Weber or your cousin? Would you rather be as good as dead in the dark than alive and free?

\- What freedom this is. You made me bend the knee. You went to a self-crowned emperor of a rag tag band of criminals and told him somewhere in jail there was a king that would gladly kneel before him – work for him- owe him his life.

\- The Emperor is a good man who went to rescue you when I only gave him the promise a good captain on his side, even you have to see-

\- See what? What a good deal that was? How easy it was for _you_ to promise this in my stead. You have only known a life of servitude; a change of master is of no importance. You were _glad_ to see me fall this way, admit it.

\- Glad? What absolute rubbish. You want to know what this is all about? Why you are saying those things to my face? In truth you talk of being dead, and being dishonoured because you want to live _so bad_. That’s all you want and it’s scares you so much. Death touched you in that putrid cell and I fought her off with teeth and nails, and now you know what it feels like to die and you are _so afraid._ You thought all there was power, glory, bravery, and whatever makes a good king and you don’t care anymore. You know someone with more pride would have already fallen on his own sword – but you _haven’t._ You realized you want to live, just to live for the thrill of hearing your heart beat and wake up every single day and it makes you sick. Being alive just for life isn’t enough for you, it debases you, it makes you like _us_. Suddenly you’re not a king worth of stories anymore, you’re a man- just a man. Just like _me_.

The comeback had waited a long time in Armand’s mouth, it had bitten at his lips to get out for weeks, and he let it run free out of tiredness and rightful anger. When Meher could not walk he had carried him, when he could barely limp, he have been there to hold him steady, and now that Meher seemed insistent on running to his death, he should step back and watch him? That was not something Armand was prepared or willing to do. So, he spat out his rage at the man he loved, at his insistence to go look for his death when he had worked so hard to drag him away from the edge. His teeth were bared, sweat was falling in his eyes and his ears were ringing from the canons shooting around them all morning – come to think of it, only one ear was ringing, he couldn’t ear a thing out of the left one, and he wondered if that had any connection with the blood that soaked his necktie and shirt. In front of him, Meher was much the same, teeth gleaming in between his ruined lips, blood falling from unseen wounds, eyes aflame with a fire Armand had always seen and always loved but at this moment was not directed at an ideal, at a thought, at how he seemed to see Armand through the tinted lenses of his perception, brighter and stronger than he was. No. The fire was directed at him, at him now, in all of his reality, in his anger and his insignificance. In this moment, Armand realized for the first time that he was aware of their bodies in a way he had never noticed before – bodies facing each other with a frightening presence, all muscles, sweat and blood, legs carrying the weight of the upper body, tense palms holding cramped knuckles. It was an acute presence he had only felt when facing another man with a sword in hand and the fear of death in his stomach. As he felt the deep wrongness of that thought and unclenched his hand to raise it in a placating gesture, Meher’s own arm raised and fell on the left side of his face with an unheard strike.

* * *

\- Armand left, sir.

The words made no sense and so Meher felt he would be justified if he simply ignored them. Then again, he hadn’t slept in almost a week, so most of the words directed at him refused to make sense. It was just as well, he had no time to listen. No time for anything at all. They had lost enough time already, first crossing through the hurricane, and then limping to port to repair the damages. He had yelled and thrown gold at all the carpenters and workers in the small seaside town. He had bargained for powder from the other pirate ships anchored in the harbour. He had been in a hundred places at once, talked until his throat was raw and Weber was at least two weeks ahead of him, with a ship in better shape than the Devil’s Smile, he had no time at all.

\- What, Diego? I have no time for-

\- Armand left, captain. He’s not on board.

If they left for open seas fast enough, took advantage of the high tides and if he begged the winds enough, they might catch up a week at most, Weber needed to make stops for water and food – he had been ready for war, not for a long journey. They might need to bury their dead as well, hold a service. That was a lot of stops, and it wasn’t accounting for the weather.

\- Well, bring him back, he must be somewhere in town.

\- He left, sir. He took his things. He must have told you something, captain-

Meher closed his eyes, gripping the desk under him to not fall. Vertigos, now. He needed to eat something, sleep maybe. He’ll sleep when they’ll have set sail for good. Armand could keep the course while he-

_Meher, I’m going. I’ve followed you this far and now I’m going. I’ve found passage across the Atlantic , you know where I’m going._

Meher opened his eyes slowly, rising them meet the light coming from the door frame of the cabin. It hurt his tired eyes the dance of light and dust, and blocking the sun’s rays, Diego’s tiny shape, looking right back at him. It is a vision just like Armand stepping into the room was a vision several hours earlier. _I didn’t hear him say those words. They made no sense so I refused to hear them. I wasn’t even there. We have nothing to say to each other, why would he step into my cabin to tell me impossible words? Armand was never a man of futile words – I asked and he answered, he told me tales that weren’t wild stories or thinly veiled metaphors of something else. They were true, honest truth of moments well and truly lived._

He staggered away from the desk, walking into the light – this had to be a world of dream where you cannot leave the room you’re in, and every door is just out of reach. His body leaned heavily on the doorframe and Diego touched his sleeve, worried.

_He left me on those words, on true, honest words. This is the end of my passage in his life. This is the end of this particular story he will tell when someone asks him, in that faraway place he’s going to._

_Esgham, look at me, please. Tell me not to go. Meher, I-_

He remembers the pause. He remembers his voice softening into nothing. He remembers that he didn’t look up. He remembers the footsteps retreating, the sun shifting on the sea and the light leaving the room.

_Remember me when you wake up, my love._

The sun is high in the sky now, the tides will soon change and the winds are resting their breath. Meher’s head feel light , his throat and chest as heavy as lead. Everything is so still and so bright, the light is as pure as it once was in the marble entrance of his father’s palace. He remembers Armand’s eyes rising to meet his, a flash of green against the white marble and the white faces. He had known then a story was starting, as sure as he could read the fine writings his teachers gave him to memorize. _Is this how it ends? Out of sight?_ _Out of reach?_ _We fell_ _in love too fast, but must we part just as fast? Must he be what changed me so thoroughly and then leave me to understand what I need to become? Shall he not witness how he transformed me? Or did he already, and deemed it an abomination? Who am I? Who am I to him? Who am I? Your arms have left me to the bitter cold, and I saw you leaving, I thought I didn’t but I did, you walked through the gardens underneath my window and when you looked at the night sky I knew you were following another path than my own. Parallel for a time but destined to part. I ignored it as long as I could, I always was stubborn, my love, but I knew. Did you leave me or am I letting you go? Were you ever by my side? The sky is falling and the winds are silent. Why is my heart so heavy and why didn’t you take it with you?_

**Author's Note:**

> Don't hesitate to leave a comment ,i won't lie, i crave validation


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